wondering wanderers

Question Time Again

2012-03-04T14:53:00.001Z

Way back at the beginning of our WWOOFing adventure I put up a post inviting questions about our plans. It was really interesting to read and answer back then and it's a post I have revisited a few times over the last 18 months.

We have spent a lot of time with real life friends and family in the last few months answering all of their questions but after a friend recently posed a load of her questions to me by email I realised it would be good to put up another post inviting questions on this next part of the adventure. So, on that basis, over to you!

Kay asked:

Will you continue to home educate on Rum? I remember reading that the island has a small school & wondered about your thoughts on that. Having made a big move ourselves from a very busy home ed community to living in the sticks with very little going on - we had to adapt. Though lots of friends came to stay, it does dwindle after a few years, as you become settled & make new friends. Are there other home ed families in the area?

Yes, it's definitely our intention to Home Educate Dragon and Star for as long as they wish to do so. The school on the island is primary only, with children heading across to the mainland for school for secondary, boarding for two weeks at a time, home for every other weekend and school holidays. Dragon will be 12 in September so would only be in the school for a term before he'd be secondary age, Star would have two years. The choice to Home Educate has always been down to the children and should they wish to try school we would support them in that choice but it is currently not one either of them is considering.

In comparing a small island school to a larger mainland school there would be pros and cons for both. It is virtually impossible to compare Home Education to either for us because our approach is an autonomous, child led one which bears little if any resemblance to a formal, structured school environment - be it large or small.

We have discussed them attending the mainland school in a couple of years if they started to feel socially isolated or wanted more in terms of resources, education stimulation etc. For now neither of them are remotely interested but as ever we'll continue to take such decisions one day / week / month / year at a time!

There is a Home Ed community (or certainly a handful of families doing it) in the Highlands and Islands so there would be the opportunity to hook up with others if we felt the need, although a ferry ride away isn't exactly local. We have already got three firm bookings of dates for friends to come and visit us and the children have friends on neighbouring small isles who we will meet up with too. I guess as with all aspects of our new life this will be a 'suck it and see' one but in the same way as we have always had to work that bit harder as Home Educators to find social, educational and entertainment opportunities we will continue to do so from this new location.

Kirsty asks:

A question for you all :) What are you most looking forward to in the coming year and what are you imagining will be the biggest hurdle to overcome?

Nic says: I am most looking forward to putting down some roots and creating a home for us again. After a year on the road I can't wait to wake up to the same view every morning. I love the idea of having a front door and a sofa and a bed all in the same place every single day. I am looking forward to having my stuff around me in permanent places again and being able to cook what I want, when I want, have quiet peaceful time to myself and do stuff like baking, jam making and crafty stuff again. I also can't wait to start growing stuff and keeping animals - I am particularly excited about the idea of pets aswell as livestock (cats! a dog!). Finally (yes I am being greedy with such a long list) I am looking forward to making friends. I love getting to know people, swapping lifestories, sharing a cup or tea (or glass of wine) and forging new friendships.

I think the biggest hurdle will be the logistics of it all - what to do first, which decisions we can feasibly put off and make once we've got our heads round things and doing them methodically and sensibly and which we will simply have to jump in with both feet and make, mistakes and all, in order to get things moving forwards. It is all very daunting building a home, a business and a whole life literally from the ground up - looking at a bare patch of ground and trying to envisage it being our everything. I know we can do it but I also know there will be things we mess up and get wrong and then have to put right again.

Ady: I am very excited at the prospect of a virgin piece of land to do whatever we want with. All the other opportunities we looked at were existing crofts or smallholdings with buildings, growing and rest of the infrastructure already in place. Croft 3 gives us the chance to put all of our own experience and knowledge into practise without any previous people's ideas in the way!

Getting used to the challenges of having no amenities will be the biggest hurdle I think. I know that is only temporary as we will get all of those things sorted over time and we have lived without being connected to water, electric etc. for the last year so we know we can do it but it does add a further dimension of difficulty.

Dragon: I am looking forward to living on Rum because, obviously it will be pretty cool to live on an island. I am looking forward to having lots of animals, being part of a community, making new friends. The thing I am looking forward to most is exploring the island.

Biggest challenge might be living in the static but we lived in Willow and that was quite easy. From where I am now staying with friends it sounds hard but I think it will probably be quite easy.

Star: I am most looking forward to living with lots of animals and having my own bedroom.

Star laughed and said the biggest challenge is answering questions like this one! When pushed she says (with one of those cartoon lightbulbs appearing over her head and a huge look of relief) building the house will be difficult. And then she ran off to play.

Jay asked:

I know self sufficiency in food is also agoal for you, Nic. What grows well there? Other than turnips, swedes and raspberries ;-) it looks quite exposed and presumably has a shorter growing season than further south

It's going to be an exercise in trying and seeing what works in lots of ways for food growing. The weather is fairly mild thanks to the island being within the Gulf stream so although it is wetter and windier than the south coast (where we used to be) the climate is not terribly dissimilar. There are few frosts / snow and thanks to being so much further north the extended daylight in summer makes up for the shorter days in winter. The croft is in a valley and on a south facing slope so a little protected with decent sun exposure. We will grow using polytunnels to help extend the season.

Plans are for fruit and nut trees - orchard and soft fruit and we will be researching good types for the climate, traditional Scottish apples etc. Tatties and other roots will grow well of course and nearby Eigg had great crops of berries and currants when we were there WWOOFing. Inside the polytunnel we'll be able to grow tomatoes, peppers etc. Outside should be fine for garlic, onions, brassicas, legumes. We will be getting the soil tested once we arrive and finding out what treatment it will need in terms of making it more fertile.

We've been told stuff has been grown on that land within living memory and certainly historically the island supported hundreds of crofters. The ground on the inner hebridian isles seems to be mostly machair which is nice fertile stuff.

Joyce asks:

As you would expect (!!) I'm a little fixated on toilet arrangements. I know that you will be going down the compost route, but what happens meanwhile? Also interested in the water issue - as someone who got a horrific intestinal infection from an untreated private water supply on Harris, I've felt nervous about that ever since. That aside, how are you going to get water into the static - is it going to be carrying your needs in all the time?

Really? Fixated on toiletting? ;)

Long term plans are for very decent compost loos - we've been looking at some fab places such as free range design. Short term we'll use the chemical toilet in the static to contain waste and adhere to Wild Camping principles for burying / dealing with waste. (clearly with no actual chemicals in the loo!)

Water will be brought in to the static daily to begin with, there is a chlorinated water supply in the village. We will begin harvesting rainwater from the start for uses other than cooking, drinking and bathing. Eventually we're planning to either harness water from the land or rainwater and put in a filtration system for bringing it to drinking quality (fully tested!).

As promised:

2012-03-04T14:49:00.002Z

To give a better idea of where we're talking about.

Here is the map view of the croft - we are Croft 3

and the googlemaps link is over here

Where everybody knows your name

2012-03-03T01:02:00.002Z

The Boston bar of an 80s TV show might be beyond our reach to go and live in but if the last few days are anything to go by life is about to lose it's anonymity.

After a few days with friends down in Yorkshire (which we used to call 'the north', oh how we laugh at our geographical ignorance of the past...) we headed back across the border again on Wednesday, primarily for my crofting course in Inverness but also to sort out some finer details about our temporary home for the first year. Being so close (relatively) to Rum and with an unexpected free day when the ferry does a day trip we decided to head over for the couple of hours between the ferry yesterday.

Having talked to the lovely people at Mcleod's caravans and looked at several of the statics they have for sale we knew what information we needed to gather before selecting the right static.

We were greeted on the ferry by the chef who remembered us from our crossing a couple of weeks ago and brought over the Highlands & Islands paper with an article about us on page three! We caught up with a few islanders as we dashed around taking photos and eyeing up the access track and very gratefully accepted a lift to and from the pier. All too soon we were back on the boat again hoping that next month we are on the boat again on our way 'home'.

Today I have been on a crofting course run by Scottish Crofting Federation - day two is tomorrow. I walked in and was introduced to another attendee who has been reading our blog and also knows one of our previous WWOOF hosts. Always good to know it's not just family and friends who read about our adventures :) And it inspires me to get posting!

Day one of the course has been excellent - loads of questions answered and contacts made. Ady, Dragon and Star were off doing further research on getting the static sorted and after lots of phonecalls and another visit to Macleods they have chosen one and all that remains is the phonecalls and emails to book delivery / make payments for that. Hurrah, a home!

Remote Welcomes

2012-02-23T23:40:00.001Z

Today has been one of those gorgeous bright winter days with the promise of spring in the air. The sun shone low in the sky, which was a beautiful blue with fluffy clouds and the daylight stretches a few minutes longer each day.

Thanks to an introduction from a friend we went along and met Mark from Green Directions this afternoon and spent a very interesting couple of hours chatting to him about alternative technologies, keeping animals and growing food. Green Directions is a really exciting project with some great opportunities for spreading the word about renewable energy and lower impact living.

We've been contacting a few of our WWOOF hosts and other people we met along the way on our adventures last year, to share our happy and exciting news of the answer to 'what happens next'. At our interview for the croft we explained that one of our greatest strengths is the big fat contacts book we have - sure enough we are getting offers of help and advice, along with making new contacts as we go.

Dragon and Star are very much enjoying the prolonged visit with friends this week - they are stocking up for the months ahead without quite so much contact with same age children, although we are getting potential visits to Rum in our diary for later this year already from various friends, so I doubt we'll have a chance to miss people too much before we are showing them round our new home. We can't wait to share it with people we love, as stunning as the photos are they still don't do it justice. I'm so looking forward to walking with friends on the beaches, pointing out wildlife and just seeing them register the views.

Life has suddenly got very busy again with a big long to do list stretching ahead of us - paperwork to process, research to do, logistics to arrange. Fortunately we're getting offers of help from Rum, of support from back in Sussex and of assistance from friends all around the country. We have no real news on the sale of the house - one viewing so far which came to nothing and late March will be spent packing up our things currently stored at my parents and working out the best way to get them up the country and across a sea - a further exercise in determining just how much we need things, another cull is certainly on the cards, goodbye electric breadmaker, farewell cheap table and chairs, au revoir business suits and high heeled shoes, we have no further need of you (and that's just Ady!).

Picture This

2012-02-22T00:55:00.003Z

In Sussex the view from our windows looks like this:

Here are some photos from our most recent trip to Rum...

minutes after we were told we'd got the croft we walked down to the beach to get phone reception to ring family and friends and share our news. As we stood looking out over the sea a rainbow appeared.

not a traffic jam in sight

looking out over the view

the bridge over the river that runs along the bottom of our croftland


happiness looks a lot like this...

Not a difficult choice to make really...

Best Laid Plans...

2012-02-21T23:26:00.001Z

We got our first taste of one of the challenges of island life when we left Rum on Saturday. We had made plans to spend some time on Eigg, doing some WWOOFing and catching up with friends. As we stepped on the ferry we were greeted with 'You'll be pleased to know we're going straight back to the mainland rather than to the other isles' which of course we were not pleased with at all! A split second decision later we stayed on and watched as Rum grew smaller and more distant.

Star turned to me and asked 'what's the plan?' to which I replied I didn't have one. She was most surprised at this; 'What do you mean you don't have a plan. You ALWAYS have a plan!' Such faith... I promised I would have a plan by the time we got off the ferry and after a quick family conference I was making the most of the occassional phone signal to make arrangements to stay with friends that evening. This made for a very long drive from Mallaig to Manchester, frantically making further plans for the following week as we went.

Once again friends have stepped into the breach to find us room in their houses for the next 10 days until we are back up in Scotland for me to attend a Crofting course next week. We are very fortunate to have such wonderful friends. And they are very fortunate to be banking favours with people who are about to move to such a beautiful place and will be only too happy to return the hospitality for holidays in years to come!

We are currently trying to live up to Star's expectation of always having a plan by working out the best order of the next few months. It feels rather like living in one of those slidey picture puzzles or a game of Rush Hour, there are lots of things which all need to happen in the right order. There are a whole load of things we have no control over - the biggest one being selling our house. Until that happens we don't have the necessary funds to start our plans for the croft. Until we move to Rum we can't start working out what has to happen first. Should we aim to move as soon as possible regardless of the house selling? We all want to be there rather than anywhere else, when you realise what you want to do with the rest of your life, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible! If we moved before the house sells though where would we live? Could we bring Willow and stay in her? That would make sense as we'd be in a position to spend time on the land, start physical stuff like sorting drainage, surveying the land, working out what is going to go where. Plus we'd start to be part of the community, making friends, building relationships, learning how everything works.

Or should we be staying on the mainland? We can go WWOOFing (we already have a potential WWOOF host all lined up for April) which means no costs - food and shelter are covered plus we get to learn some more new skills.

The trouble is, as I was saying to my Mum the other day, it's really hard to make sensible decisions these days, as if we were making sensible decisions we almost certainly wouldn't be faced with any of these choices anyway! Sensible has long since ceased to be something we have any relationship with!

So I guess it's still a bit 'watch this space' really. And I haven't even told you about our longer term plans...

And you thought the whole WWOOFing year idea was ambitious...?

2012-02-17T19:59:00.001Z

That had nothing on our next move!

We arrived yesterday on the Isle of Rum, after a fairly epic journey all the way up the UK - we stayed with friends in Sheffield (and caught up with several other friends while we were there) and had an overnight in Fort William. It feels very different travelling at 60mph (officer ;)) in the car rather than 30mph in Willow. Faster certainly but you miss ever such a lot of the scenery. In mentioning this we all realised we'd made an observation of life in general aswell as this specific journey...

The ferry crossing was smooth and is only just over an hour to Rum. We were on board with four of the five interviewers which made for a slightly odd feeling of all studiously not watching or listening to each other's conversations 'just in case'.

We were met off the ferry by one of the islanders, wife to the fifth interviewer, who gave us (and our two weeks worth of luggage) a lift along to the Village Hall. It's only about a mile or so but that would have felt a very long mile carrying all our stuff so we were very grateful. Settled into the hall with cups of tea we four faced their five across the table and the interview commenced.

It was a fairly tough grilling we thought. The questions were a wide variety including logistical stuff about house builds, planning and access from the council representative, questions about how we'd fit into the community, what we would add to it and how we could make positive contributions from the Community Development Officer. We were asked about our understanding of the islands NNR (National Nature Reserve) status, how we would ensure we did not compromise any of the wildlife, flora and fauna on the island with our planned activities and lifestyle by the Reserve Estate Worker and finally the people from the Crofting Committee asked questions about crops, livestock and business ideas.

We stumbled in a few places, knowing that realistically no one has all the answers to just how such an unknown quantity of a brand new croft on a remote Scottish island with a population of under 40 people in a community which is in a very transitional stage of gaining independance from a larger government body might pan out. We certainly don't. What we do have is endless energy and enthusiasm, a sense of humour, a tight family unit that all want the same future, passion and spirit. We have all sorts of skills and experience in life, in management, in being flexible and adaptable, in making friends and winning over a tricky crowd. We have not walked a conventional path to this point, we have faced challenges and questions and know our strengths and our limitations. We have a lot of people behind us cheering us on, maybe from afar in spirit and often in person, ready to roll their sleeves up and help us construct our dreams. We are prepared to invest everything in this next stage - Rum will become our home, our livelihood, we will need it to provide for all our needs - social, cultural, educational, put food in our tummies, give us a home. In order to ensure it lives up to all that we will have the ultimate responsibility to make that happen - we'll need to put in as much if not more than we take back. This was our answer to the questions we didn't have answers to at our fingertips - that we might not know the answer yet, but we would now how to go about finding it out.

A lot of the questions asked were preceded with 'you've already kind of answered this already...' which either means we are viewing all of what happens next as one all encompassing project under the banner 'living' or that we talk too much....

We were then sent off while the panel made their minds up. We took the time to check into the hotel and have a little walk on the croft land before heading back to be given the news.

It was a yes :) :)

And so the next adventure begins - wanderers no more, wonderers always.

A lot to smile about

2012-01-28T17:49:00.004Z

Life is good :)

In the mornings Dragon and Star let out and feed the animals here at Middlewick - chickens, ducks, goats, pigs, all under the watchful eye of Maggie the dog. Watching them with animals, up to their ankles in mud, in their element. This is so their natural habitat!

We have some fabulous friends here in Glastonbury and it's been great to spend time with them these last few weeks, catching up on each others lives, laughing, drinking, bouncing ideas off each other. Amazing to think that this time last year we didn't even know Jill and Johnny and it was a chance encounter being in the right time at the right place as WWOOFers that brought us together, now we're on our third visit!

We've been lucky to spend lots of time with amazing friends in the last month too - helping us through some tough times, loving us for who we are and just being fantastic. In the very rare dark time I hug the knowledge of my amazing times to me and it keeps me warm and fuzzy.


My Mate Mich - one of Star's extra Mummies


January - crisp, clear, sunny walks with a pub at the other end!


with friends on the beach - life probably doesn't get much better


cooking round a fire on a Friday night in January - rules are for the rest of the world!


The Barts - they've caught up with us so many times on our adventure they are practically WWOOFers too!

We have a plan, actually that should be A Plan. We're back in Sussex for a couple of weeks to catch up with family and friends - and very excited about meeting one of our blog followers IRL for the first time :). We'll be getting our house de-tenanted and on the market too. Then we're off back up to Scotland again - the calling of the isles is very strong, particularly given all these reports of the Northern Lights! We have our croft interview, some catching up with friends, a bit more WWOOFing, some getting to know the rest of the community on the Isle of Rum and a Crofting course. Busy, busy, busy!

We've also lined up some more WWOOFing for March and April, this time down on the south coast where we're hoping to make some more new friends, pick up some more new skills and enjoy what is clearly the best suited lifestyle to us again while we wait for our house to sell.

January Part 2

2012-01-25T17:50:00.001Z

January is also a month for looking forward :)

This year, much like last year we are standing at the cusp of another life changing year. Last night Ady asked me if I was more or less nervous about the possible stuff ahead of us this year than I was last year. My reply was 'more'. More nervous, more excited, more aware of a feeling of 'forever' about it. Last year was the feeling that life was going to be an adventure. This year I have a feeling adventure will be our life.

We're back in limbo to an extent again - sort of WWOOFing here in Glastonbury, although because our hosts are now firm friends and we are that bit more experienced there is less of the learning aspect to being here. Next week we're travelling back to Sussex and will in a rather surreal twist spend a few nights 'camped' in our house. Our tenants are due to leave and we will need to get the place ready to go on the market. We have some stuff in the garage and in the loft, our chickens are there and from reports we have had from the agent and my Dad who did a landlord visit the place will need quite some licking back into shape before it is ready to call in the estate agent. We're planning a week or so based there to get that sorted before heading back up to Scotland for our Rum interview.

For now we'll work on the assumption that we will be successful and Croft 2 will be ours - we do have plans B and C in reserve but fingers crossed we don't need to call them into action. That leaves us with a few 'out of our hands' factors to get past which always makes me feel slightly wobbly - if we are offered the croft, if our house sells... in the meantime we are left homeless and penniless. We can't afford to actually live back in our house with all the bills that entails, we can just about cover the mortgage for a couple of months while it stands empty on the market. Our best option is to head off WWOOFing again really - either down in Sussex near our house, ready to deal with packing up our old life, or up in Scotland ready to start getting stuck into our new one.

We're scaring ourselves silly just now trying to price up house builds, moving costs and setting up a whole life again. The thing is we know that when we actually get out there and do it we can take on anything - I'm off to listen to Elvis singing 'little less conversation, a little more action' - it's where we need to be right now...

Here's how the others are feeling :

Ady: I was pleased to finish WWOOFing and come out of Willow at the end of last year as it was getting tough going into winter living in a van. I do miss the van though and when we visited her at Christmas I felt really sad to drive away from her. Coming back to Sussex was a bit of an anti climax really, we felt like we'd changed so much but everyone else was still living their same lives. I don't feel the same now about our next stage as I did at the beginning of last year. I was so scared we would stuggle with the level of hard work, that the van wouldn't make the journey, that we were all but destined to fail. It turned out that everything we set out to do we managed though and although I am nervous about the challenges ahead this time I have confidence that we *can* do anything we try. I do feel we have been back in conventional life for too long - we are shopping in supermarkets, watching TV, relying on home comforts. I have my moments of feeling terrified about Rum alongside really looking forward to it. I worry about fitting into the community, building a house, whether our business plan will actually be feasible. I am ready to just make it happen now, the anticipation is so difficult - I want to get there, succeed, or fail and work out how to try again.

Dragon: I'm looking forward to Rum for all sorts of different reasons - building a house, fishing, bird watching, learning to ride a bike, having a home and keeping animals, having my own bedroom I can decorate how I like, having machinery and growing stuff, finding inspiration for my painting and drawings. This stage makes me feel a bit wobbly, I don't 100% know what is going to happen next and I'll feel better once we've been to the interview, whether we get accepted or not at least we will know for certain what is going to happen next. I hope I enjoy it all.

Star: It scares me a bit that we no real idea what's going to happen next. I think it will be so cool to live on an island, I'm excited about the wildlife - birds, animals, the scenery. I'm looking forward to taking some great photographs on Rum. This feels bigger than when we went WWOOFing because we are selling our house and moving somewhere else - more scary and more exciting.

Ah, January.

2012-01-23T21:00:00.000Z

A time for looking back - I always take some time out in January to look back over the previous year. It's my birthday on 6th and along with facing up to being another year older I like to recap on what has happened in the twelve months gone by, to celebrate the victories, learn from the mistakes and congratulate myself on staying put on the planet while it circled all the way around the sun again. Last January we were packing up our lives ready to set off on adventure. Willow was sitting on our driveway, a To Let sign was on display in our front garden, our resignation letters were ready to print off and hand in, a full diary of names and addresses of hosts we had yet to meet stretched infront of us. We were filled with anticipation, nerves and the knowledge that whatever else might happen in the coming year it wouldn't be normal. conventional or like anything else we'd ever experienced. 2011 was an amazing year, exceeding expectations, broadening horizons, opening eyes, stretching boundaries, increasingly knowledge, whetting appetites, living, learning, laughing, loving.

A photo a month from our wonderful year:


January - on the beach in Sussex with friends


February - our Bye Then party, being presented with the most generous gifts


March - our first host, we slept in our tent, it was minus four at night!


April - Devon. It's the photos that don't go as planned that make me smile the most when I look back at them!


May - Somerset. Ady has his 47th birthday and celebrates with stick fighting with Dragon!


June - North Wales. Remote mountainside host with broken down Willow. I learn how to carve a spoon


July - Durham. It looks like a prize marrow, infact it is the worlds largest courgette!


August - Yorkshire. We went underground!


September - John O Groats - we made it all the way to the top!


October - Scotland, wild camping. In a round of playing games Dragon creates one called 'the long and confusing game' making use of dice, playing cards, toy cars and a very complicated set of rules.


November - Isle of Eigg. We spent two weeks looking across the sea at Rum before heading there to see it in more detail. From a distance it looked like it could be home, from close up it looked even more likely.

December - Peak District. At a youth hostel for a group holiday with friends.

I also look ahead, spend some time thinking about the coming year and what I'd like to achieve. What hopes and dreams and wishes I have and what I can do to make them happen.

Winter WWOOFing

2012-01-11T23:21:00.000Z

Six weeks 'off' was long enough! Despite Christmas, New Year, Birthdays (Star's and mine!), holiday and various trips to stay with friends, catching up with family and a round of doctors, dentists, opticians and other such appointments we were starting to feel lazy, fat and stale. Too much time spent slumped on sofas, eating, drinking and watching TV, too little time spent outside being productive and active.

So we're back in Glastonbury again for a couple of weeks, staying at Middlewick which is now far more than just a holiday cottage complex - it's a smallholding! Complete with chickens, ducks, goats, cat, dog, horses and after helping to create a new home for them on our first day here today, pigs are due to arrive too!

We've been lifting, carrying, cleaning, wearing our wellies and getting muddy. Our arms ache and we've had lungfuls of fresh air and exercise. Dragon and Star spent the morning climbing the Tor with Maggie, the resident dog here, meeting up with some of the other guests for a chat at the top where they told them all about our family and our adventures and charmed them sufficiently to be brought cakes :). They spent the afternoon building a den down by the river. Proper education :) Socialising, adventuring, exercising, problem solving, co-operation and teamwork, entertaining and amusing themselves, striking out independantly and generally having a ball. This evening we went swimming.

We've just learnt we have been offered an interview for the croft on Rum, so our What Happens Next plans are ticking along nicely. Plenty more to plot and plan for that and even more exciting times ahead but for now the sun is shining and it's fabulous to be outside working in it again :).

Still in the commercial break

2011-12-29T22:40:00.000Z

The silence here is very indicative of how we're feeling. We've been mostly staying with my parents, punctuated with shorter stays with various other family and friends. It's lovely to catch up with people, to sit on sofas, have baths, cook in kitchens, sleep in beds, have access to all our belongings (although remember we did declutter to a fairly extreme degree this time last year so 'all our belongings' is still a fairly small heap!), plug things in whenever we feel like it, be able to 'pop' to the supermarket open all hours across the road.

But it's also fairly stifling. There I said it!

We find the constant hum of traffic noisy, smelly, distracting and disturbing. The constant drone of the television with it's endless rounds of repeats and rubbish and adverts bleak and depressing. The waste of time and money and food caused by that very supermarket punting out cheap food at all hours which is supposed to free people of time and money.

I am not sitting in judgement of the way our family and friends live their lives. For the first 30 odd years (for me, 40 odd for Ady) we lived ours just the same and we felt fulfilled and happy almost all of the time. But now the four of us are hankering after those days we spent this year engaged in collecting and chopping firewood, sowing, harvesting or preserving foods, baking bread, fishing for our tea, looking out of our window and seeing the sun rise and set, or the rain tip from the sky and our beautiful world going by.

In lots of ways although we are finding elements of this period a challenge that reassures us that our future plans are right. That we won't be missing these aspects of our old life once we don't have access to them any more. That the simpler lifestyle we spent so much of this year living and enjoying is indeed the right one for us. Hand on heart we can all say that we didn't hanker after Sussex or central heating, or 24 hour Tescos or pre-packaged pasta sauce or indeed any of the things we are kissing goodbye to when we embark on the next step of our journey. It's been a good test to have access to all these things again just to see how we felt about them.

We visited Willow on Christmas Eve, just a fleeting pop in to collect something we'd left in one of the cupboards. It felt like a real wrench to lock the door and drive away from her again though. As lovely as spending time with family is I think all four of us would have been very happy to wake up in Willow on Christmas morning and have a go at cooking a turkey in our little oven.

So as 2011 draws to a close we are able to know for sure that we have had an amazing adventure this year and are more than ready to set off on the next one, knowing for certain that we simply don't belong here any more.

Part Two

2011-12-20T15:07:00.000Z

Sorry for the silence. It's been a constant round of catching up with family and friends, doing festive stuff and also putting the first touches to our What Happens Next plans.

I'll talk about that a bit more once we actually know whether our hopes are to be realised as for now that is out of our hands with other people making the next decision. I'll update as soon as we know what our next move is to be but for now I'd like to share a newspaper story that appeared about us in the Scotsman, which will also spill the beans about what we'd really love to be our next move.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/woof_family_hope_to_head_for_rum_1_2008815

‘Woof’ family hope to head for Rum

The family who want to live on Rum

Published on Thursday 15 December 2011 11:59

THEY went in search of the Good Life and believe they have found it on a remote Scottish island.
After nine months of travelling the country in a 30-year-old campervan, working on farms and crofts, the family from Sussex are ready to put down roots and have set their hearts on becoming nearly a tenth of the population of Rum.
Ady, 47, his wife Nic, 38, and children Dragon, 11 and Star, nine, have applied for one of the first crofts created on the island after living an “off grid” lifestyle, travelling across the UK in an activity known as WWOOFing (Willing Workers On Organic Farms), using a network of hosts to facilitate placements on organic farms.
The family recently visited Skye and the community-owned island of Eigg where they learned islanders on Rum were offering new croftland to help increase the population and stimulate the economy.
The Goddards are now among those whose applications will be considered by tomorrow’s closing date with potential crofters due to be interviewed in January or February.
The crofts have also attracted inquiries from Edinburgh and even the Czech Republic, as well as existing islanders, despite being little more than rough ground at present.
Nic, who previously worked in retail management and marketing, said: “I believe everything we have been doing over the last year has been leading up to this.
“It’s down to the people of Rum whether we are successful with our application, but we feel we are right for the island.”
“Over the last ten years we have been moving away from conventional life towards self sufficiency. We had ideas of an idyllic life but we wanted to see for ourselves what it would be like so we could go into it with our eyes open.
“Undoubtedly there is a lot of work to be done building the croft, but there is a certain attraction starting something from scratch.”
She said the family also like the idea of being part of a population that makes its own decisions. While most of Rum is owned by Scottish Natural Heritage, the village of Kinloch is run by the Isle of Rum Community Trust on behalf of the 38-strong population.
She added: “We have learnt so much this year about living off the land. We know what the important things are to consider when looking at land, what crops are worth growing, which animals are worth keeping. We have practical skills such as fencing, building, growing. We have vastly extended our knowledge base on animal keeping, harvesting, tending to livestock and crops.
“We have learnt so much about alternative building methods, green energy, off grid living, low impact lifestyles.”
The two crofts on offer are located to the west of Kinloch and the trust admits they will both require a “significant amount of work” to improve he area beyond rough grazing.
Vikki Trelfer, Rum’s development officer, said the trust has a vision for the island as a vibrant and viable community for people of all ages and a sustainable and diverse economy.
She said new residents with children would help to keep the school open. At present there is only one P7 pupil in the school, one three-year-old in the nursery, and two children under three, while three teenagers go to secondary school in Mallaig.
“New residents will bring different skills and expertise to assist development of the community on Rum. Also, there are a number of opportunities for providing visitor services on the island in the private sector,” she said.
“Rum needs people with skills and drive to take advantage of its huge potential as a major visitor destination.”
The only other croft has already been let to Rum residents.

Interlude

2011-12-03T23:32:00.001Z

Feel free to play your own hold music!

We're currently staying mostly at my parents house back in Sussex. I say mostly because although we've been back in Sussex for a couple of weeks we have had various overnight stays with other family and friends scattered around and this coming week we're off again for 10 days.

It's lovely to catch up with family and friends properly, to take some time to look back at photos of our adventure and start to turn some of the stories of our adventures into memories and anecdotes, looking back fondly on even the challenging bits. It's nice to have electricity at the flick of a switch, hot water whenever we want it, access to a washing machine, a bath, our own bed and most of our possessions which have been stored here for us.

It's also incredibly stifling and in many ways far more challenging than WWOOFing, staying with hosts or living in a campervan. Which is no reflection on my parents or indeed where they live, but a very telling indicator of how much we have changed. It was a concern of ours that once we returned to a 'normal' setting we would not want to leave it again, that the things we were so adamant we had not missed would infact remind us of how wonderful they were and make us feel we'd never want to leave again.

Instead we are reminded daily of how much freer and happier we felt during this year. How much we loved the lack of traffic and people and bustle. How the convenience of a supermarket does not make up for the fact trees were chopped down to build the carpark. That the downside of a sofa and a TV is feeling unfit and unhealthy slumped on one infront of the other. All four of us are missing the lifestyle we led this year and are enjoying this period as a brief reminder of what we left behind and why it's just not right for us any more.

It feels rather strange not to be working in some capacity - either as paid employees or as WWOOFers but we have certainly been busy. We had so many things to catch up on: Doctors, dentists, opticians, blood donor appointments all round for routine medical maintenance. We had to empty out Willow, give her a really good clean, declare her SORN and leave her put to bed for now, resting on a friend's land until such time as she is called back into service again. We bought my car back out of retirement and had to do the reverse exercise with that; Tax, insurance, MOT, bit of mechanical attention from the time off road and get used to driving something smaller and with gears again. We had various financial things to put in order and paperwork to file. Finally we have given our tenants their two month notice and had an estate agent visit the house to value it and begin the proceedings for putting it on the market.

It's a strange sort of limbo period, not helped by it being so close to Christmas which is always chaotic and frantic for everyone anyway. For us, it is a time of biding our time, finalising our plans for what happens next and working on a new set of dreams and hopes and ideas. All very exciting and hopefully soon to be shared on here but for now, maybe listen to a bit of festive music while we're on hold.

End of Part One

2011-11-15T00:21:00.001Z

A phrase which for some reason always makes me think of Coronation Street even though I've not watched it for years and years.

We have finished our planned nine months of WWOOFing. We have seen Spring, Summer, Autumn and the beginning of winter since we set off from home, travelled over 5000 miles, visited England, Wales and Scotland, on motorways, single track lanes, busses, recovery trucks, tractors, canoes, speedboats, ferries. We've been through almost every county and slept in campervans, caravans, tents, strawbale houses, yurts, regular houses, holiday cottages, friends houses, beds, sofas, camping mats, futons, bunk beds, floors. We've had mains electric, no electric, solar, wind and water power. We've pooed in compost toilets, flushing toilets, buried it in the ground. We've bathed in showers, baths, public toilets, lochs, swimming pools, campsites, springs and holy water, using boiled rainwater. We have cooked over open fires, on camping gas, woodburners. We've watched births and deaths, been to slaughterhouses and caught and killed, we've gutted, butchered, packed and processed. We have sown, weeded, picked, dug and harvested. We've pickled, bottled, peeled and preserved. We've been covered in sheeps milk, cows milk, pig poo, chicken blood, mud, mud and more mud. We have mowed and strimmed and chopped and dug, driven tractors and vans and pickups and cars, sold at markets, bought at auctions, bartered and swapped. We have seen sunsets and sunrise, moonlit nights and star spangled skies. We have seen sun and rain, wind and snow, fog and ice and many, many rainbows. We've had suntans and freckles and freezing cold toes. We have seen mountains and seas, gorges and valleys, lochs and rivers and caves. We have seen deer, otters, eagles, dolphins, kingfishers, sloworms, birds, beetles and butterflies, handled pigs, cows, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, dogs, cats. We have met so, so many people. People who inspired us, amazed us, taught us, made us laugh, made us cry, annoyed us, enchanted us, were just like us, were nothing like us, people who challenged us, people who delighted us.

It has truly been the most amazing, fantastic, fulfilling, challenging, inspiring, exciting, educational journey and adventure. It has been everything we dreamed it might be and so, so much more. We left with dreams and hopes and wishes and they have all come true and pushed us to reach even further to grab even more. We left everything behind to look for something more, something different and oh how we have found it. We have spent time together this year, real quality time. Hours and hours of sitting, talking, walking, playing games together, reading stories, listening to music, learning together, sharing new experiences together and learning so much about each other. You simply can't live in such a small space together for such a long time without getting to know each other inside out, understanding what makes each other tick, where our strengths lie and what are our failings.

We have learnt so much this year about living off the land. We now know the answers as to whether it is possible to be self sufficient and if so, how? We know what the important things are to consider when looking at land, what crops are worth growing, which animals are worth keeping. We have practical skills such as fencing, building, growing. We have vastly extended our knowledge base on animal keeping, harvesting, tending to livestock and crops. We have learnt about preserving and processing, selling and storing. We know about good ideas for revenue streams and things not to bother trying. We have learnt so much about alternative building methods, green energy, off grid living, low impact lifestyles. We know where we stand on ethical and moral dilemmas, what our take is on what is important and what doesn't actually matter. We have a line in the sand, a starting point, a place to stand at and shout 'Go!'

We know the sort of people we do and don't want in our lives, we know where we want to settle and what we are looking for from a home. We know our goals, our ideals and our limits. We have our wish list, our priorities and our planned next moves. The questions we started this adventure with are now answered.

But that's all for part two. For now, let's enjoy the break at the end of part one.

Crofting on the Isle of Eigg

2011-11-14T12:23:00.001Z

Our final WWOOF hosts (for now - never say never!) were Neil, Sue and Struan on their croft on the Scottish Isle of Eigg (I really recommend clicking the link and reading all about it).

Eigg is one of the Small Isles of the Inner Hebrides with regular ferry crossings from both the mainland at Mallaig and the isle of Skye. During the summer it is a very popular tourist destination, in the winter months although people still visit there is more of an intimate feeling of seeing the island 'off duty'.

Our trip to Eigg was initially thrilling as the usual ferry was not running and a replacement much smaller boat service whisked us across the water in a very speedy fashion. This was fantastic for the first half of the journey as Dragon, Star and I sat outside and got soaked with sea spray and buffeted about by the wind. Eventually though the cold and wet soaked through and we all started to turn blue and shivery so moved back inside, where the choppiness started to get to us (along with pretty much everyone else - the whole boat went deathly silent and people started to look quite green). I think another ten minutes would have resulted in sickness all round but just at that point where lying flat on the floor was starting to look like an attractive idea we arrived.

Our first impressions of the island were helped by the friendly woman chatting to us on the boat and the people milling around the tea room / shop at the pier all of whom smiled or said hello. The smaller boat had been quicker so we were in much earlier than expected and Neil didn't arrive for about ten minutes, which was good as it meant we'd all regained our normal colour and taken lots of deep breaths before we had to get into the car. We got a very brief introduction to the island as Neil drove us across it to the far side where their croft is and showed us into our WWOOFing accommodation - a cosy byre complete with wood burner, bunk beds and a futon, table and chairs, sink, cooker and supply of books and magazines. It was lovely :)

Our work included all manner of things giving us a real taste of life as crofters - we did animal feeding and mucking out, pruning, harvesting and weeding of fruit and vegetables, breadmaking, fencing, wood processing. hole digging and loads more. We worked in all areas of the croft and with the various livestock they have there; chickens, ducks, pigs, cattle, cat and dog.

In our downtime we spent hours walking the beaches, including the famous Singing Sands, watching amazing sunsets and stunning scenery. We did lots of walking and visited the museum and the island swap shop (a sort of freecycle arrangement where islanders leave unwanted stuff for other islanders to take). We had a fabulous evening at the Bonfire and fireworks on Guy Fawkes night which was just magical with the whole community out together watching the fireworks and the kids playing with sparklers before retiring to the tea room for a jamming session on spoons and bagpipes with plenty of drinking, chatting and laughing. We also visited the Neighbourhood Pub - a little converted byre complete with circular pool table, darts board and juke box in the shape of a big screen TV with internet access.

Dragon and Star loved meeting all the island kids and fell in with the pack learning all about island life from a childs' point of view. They particularly loved spending time with Struan and are hoping to stay in touch having enjoyed many happy hours getting to know him and playing games together.

Neil, Sue and Struan were excellent WWOOF hosts, sharing their lives with us literally - meals, evenings and social occassions during our stay aswell as in conversation in telling us all about crofting, island life and the inevitable swapping of life stories that happens when you meet new hosts. They were the perfect end to a fantastic run of people we have met this year and their croft and Eigg was the perfect location to close this chapter of the adventure too.

Dragon:
Bad: We left early (we went to visit nearby Isle of Rum, more on that later, and the only way of visiting was to return to the mainland and go back across to Rum as ferries were on winter timetables) and missed a birthday party we'd been invited to and were looking forward to attending.
Good: The accommodation, the people (our hosts and the other islanders).
Learnt: About crofting and life on a small island.

Star:
Bad: That Struan had to go to school! We really enjoyed playing with him and it would have been great if he'd been around all the time.
Good: I loved the beaches, especially the Singing Sands, Bonfire Night and the socialising with the other islanders.
Learnt: Lots about whales.

Ady:
Bad: Due to the time of year we didn't have enough daylight hours to explore the island as fully as I'd have liked. Had we been there during summer we would have had several hours each evening to go off walking and see more of Eigg.
Good: Living on the island in a community, Bonfire night was really enjoyable.
Learnt: About crofting.

Nic
Bad: I spent a lot of time pacing the beaches trying to get straight in my head what our next move should be. The trouble with constantly travelling to beautiful places meeting interesting people with desireable lives is we keep on finding something even more attractive to us for a next move than the lifestyle before!
Good:A fitting end to what has been an amazing year so far. This host experience had everything - livestock and crops, beautiful location, green, self sufficient way of life, spirit of community, learning opportunities, interesting work, lovely accommodation.
Learnt: That there remains still so much more to learn! About crofting and island life.

off to Eigg we go

on the boat, it had a lot in common with a theme park ride!

tending to the pigs

on the croft - Rum in the background

Cleadale, Laig beach in background, Rum in the distance

beautiful sunsets

the whole community out for Bonfire night

Rum


Rum and the singing sands

the singing sands

Eigg

2011-11-03T17:31:00.000Z

A very brief picture post to say we arrived safe on Eigg (although at various points on the rough boat trip it felt like we might not!) and are having a fab time.

Hosts are lovely, Eigg is lovelier and time is rushing past.

Last WWOOF

2011-10-29T00:04:00.000+01:00

So many feelings as we leave the holiday cottage in the morning ready to travel across to catch the ferry on Monday that will take us to our last WWOOF host. Before every host we have had feelings of trepidation. Will they be nice? What will be expected of us? Where will we sleep? What sort of food will they feed us? Will we like them, will they like us? Will we have to run off in the dead of night to escape?

This is our biggest gap by far between hosts as is also tinged with that end of term is approaching type feeling. In many ways this feels the same as just before we were leaving our house to start this adventure - lots of uncertainty about what happens next, lots of excitement about the next phase being imminent, lots of looking ahead and wondering what will happen next, lots of looking back and thinking about what we are leaving behind us.

We have toyed with the idea of not doing this last host. It will be our first host where we have to leave Willow far behind - the island does not allow vehicles so we'll be boarding the ferry on foot with an even smaller percentage of our belongings than we are currently used to - and we thought we were already being pretty darn minimalistic! The weather is changing and is wilder, windier, wetter - not quite so inviting to be living the outdoorsy lifestyle in November as it was back in May. We've had a taste of the comfortable lifestyle back in a cottage for a week. Also the call of friends and family back south is getting louder - we'll be heading back to Sussex to catch up with people and put our affairs in order in just a couple of weeks and there is a temptation to just do that now.

But this host is on an island, something we have not done yet and we are excited about the idea of that. They sound nice and interesting and able to teach us new stuff which is of course the whole point of this exercise. Plus there is certainly a part of me at least that wants to actually know it's our last host while we're there, not looking back retrospectively thinking 'oh, that host five weeks ago was our last one after all'. I want to do my saying goodbye to this section of the adventure while we're still actually there to do it properly.

So, no idea what we'll have in the way of phone signal, internet connection, electricity to power things up. Don't know if toilets will flush, showers will be hot (or indeed there at all). No idea if we'll be working inside or outside, eating dinner at 5pm, 7pm or 10pm. But at some point in the next few weeks I'll be back to tell you all about it. Until then, we'll be off WWOOFing again.

Hosts Jim, but not as we know them

2011-10-28T23:53:00.000+01:00

We've met some amazing people this year. As we move rapidly towards our last WWOOF host (Monday! Eek!) I've been reflecting on some of the interesting, inspiring and incredibly hospitable hosts we've stayed with.

We have also stayed with various friends and family over the course of this year, often at times when we really needed friendly faces and welcomming arms and we are so very grateful for the times friends have come through for us. There are various people who deserve special mentions - and believe me I have a whole Wondering Wanderers awards ceremony type blogpost waiting in reserve for just such a time, with theme music, tearful acceptance speeches and some sort of gong based loosely on Willow, oh and spangly dresses and guest presenters and.... oops sorry, drifted off a little there!

Anyway, where I am going with this is a rather long winded but heartfelt and slightly tearful THANK YOU to Lynda and Stuart. Friends who have become family and who have been supportive, kind and very hospitable to us this year. We have stayed with them several times on our way past their home and had hoped they would be able to visit us on our Scottish leg of the adventure. Sure enough they came up to Scotland AND we got to share the holiday cottage they booked.

Luxury. A bed, a bath, flushing toilets, sofas, TV, plug sockets and a kitchen! In exchange for welcomming us into their cottage and giving us lifts and supplying lots of ingredients we did the catering for the week and got to bake bread, cook roast dinners, boil broth, make crumbles and pies and generally remember what life is like with more space and more facilities.

Willow was fixed and is now up and running again - thanks to our breakdown cover and fab service by a local recovery service we are able to complete this last bit of the journey.

So we've had a lovely week exploring Fort William. We climbed the very first little bit of Ben Nevis which we could see out of the windows of the cottage (we'll be back one day with proper footwear to climb the whole thing), we did loads of walking, we watched the steam trains each day running close to the cottage, visited Inverlochy Castle and enjoyed full days activity knowing we had a warm bath followed by a soft bed at the end of each day.

Thank you so much, we love you lots xxx

Wild Camping - summing up

2011-10-28T23:13:00.000+01:00

The Wild Camping phase of our adevnture is over, infact it actually ended a week ago when we arrived at a holiday cottage for a week but that's a post all of it's own.

We spent six weeks living in the van from leaving our last host, that's 42 nights. Only 9 of them were spent on campsites with electric hook up, showers and toilets. All of the rest were spent parked up wherever we could find each night. This included lay-bys, carparks, roadsides, closed-for-the-season campsites. We parked in woodlands, lochsides, beside the sea, on the side of mountains, in remote places. We have seen stunning sunrises, sunsets, starry skies and moonlit nights. We've seen so much wildlife and scenery amd watched late summer turn to autumn and start to turn to winter.

We have been stripped back to the most basic of human needs - food, drink, warmth, shelter, where to go to the toilet and how to keep clean. At no point have we struggled, suffered or been in any danger, but it is the closest I've ever been to more basic survival and not knowing where I'd be sleeping each night.

So how was it?

It was fun, it was fulfilling, it was interesting, exciting and challenging. These six weeks have probably embodied the whole year in many ways. We have seen new sights and sounds, had new experiences, found what we want to do next and learnt something new every day. One of my favourite quotes is Jonathan Swift's 'May you live every day of your life'. We did that. We lived every day.

Over to the others...

Dragon:
Bad: Stuff I didn't do. I have not seen the Northern Lights, didn't have a go at shooting, never caught my own fish and cooked it in the van.
Good: How much we did do! Still wowed at how much we saw on the very first week. We saw an extremely beautiful stag (mostly in sillouette). It was brilliant visiting Skye, it's certainly the place I want to live. I really liked the house we went to visit.
Learnt: That it is possible to live in a community in this country by living on an island instead of just a remote village in somewhere like Africa, or somewhere like the communities we've stayed at where people choose to live together.

Star:
Bad: Seeing roadkill - we saw a dead otter and what we think was a dead hare. There is not much space to live in when we're in the van all the time.
Good: We saw snow! I liked playing games in the van with everyone, that was fun. I also liked the evenings in Willlow, it was really nice all being together. We've seen lots and lots and lots and lots of wildlife, like golden eagles, deer, otters, seals.
Learnt: You don't need TV, consoles or other electronic things to entertain you, you can play really basic games like cards.

Ady:
Bad: Condensation. The damp and mould that started in the last couple of weeks living in the van. I worry about the impact of it on our health and it was a daily battle trying to keep on top of it.
Good: Loved being parked overnight and waking up to snow capped mountains all around us. I like being with the kids in the evenings. The wild camping experience has been so lovely, eating, talking together and having no outside distractions. I have slept better, eaten better and lived better.
Learnt: Lots about the Scottish property market - totally different to buying and selling houses in England. Also learnt that the remoteness of the highlands means that people are more helpful and able to do things than in the densely populated area in the south where we lived.

Nic:
Bad: The mouse! Also the needing to curtail things like splashing in puddles and walking in the rain due to lack of places to get warm, dry and clean for us and clothing.
Good: We found where we want to live :) We ticked off loads of things we wanted to see, do and experience on our list. We had some fantastic quality time together chatting, playing games, singing songs, reading books, learning about each other.
Learnt: Precisely how long I can go without washing my hair before I start to feel really skanky, how very little money we can feed ourselves for. Finely honed our lists of what we do and don't miss about conventional living.

Mice and Mould

2011-10-25T00:00:00.000+01:00

When I started this blog I wanted to document the highs and the lows of the adventure. The challenges and the victories.

We've recorded the tough bits at the various hosts and the issues along the way. We have the usual family falls outs, thankfully not very often. I guess we simply couldn't live in such a small space if there was constant squabbling or the need to have more time and space away from each other than our rather limited accomodation affords us. Dragon and Star are very close siblings and probably fall out a lot less than most other brothers and sisters I know (I certainly would not have wanted to share such a tiny space with my little brother when we were children, much as I loved him and get on well with him now) and there is a certain intensity to sharing 24 hours a day with your spouse when you both used to have seperate days from each other Monday to Friday.

In the main though I think the impact on our relationships with each other has been all positive. We have all got to know each other better, both as a group or team or family unit and as four individuals with intermeshed relationships between each of us. There are tears, tantrums, shouting and strops of course, it would be terribly unhealthy if there was not and I think putting feelings out there for discussion, talking stuff through and continually communicating is hugely important - both for the sanity of the four of us today and for learning those skills for the future. I like to think that yet another side effect of this adventure for Dragon and Star will the increased levels of tolerance for others, compassion and empathy, negotiation and conflict resolution skills, knowing when to diffuse a situation and when to air your views with a big shouting session is appropriate. The upshot of this lifestyle is that you simply cannot be selfish, you have to take into account the feelings and needs of others, you must take accountability for the impact of your actions on others. Co-operation, working together and playing to everyone's strengths is essential.

So while living in this small space with others has it's challenges the lessons being learnt from them are sufficient to weigh that up as a positive.

Other positives include learning to live with less stuff, live on less money, appreciating the simplicity that is possible and feeling so much more engaged with the world around us. The turning of the seasons having a true impact on our daily lives over and above turnning up the heating or switching off a light. Overall we continue to love every day knowing we are making memories that will last us forever and having an adventure that we will talk of for the rest of our days and will shape what happens to us from here.

But the downsides? There are not many, probably way fewer than most people experience on their normal daily lives with houses and jobs and TVs and sofas. But there are difficulties with this way of life which mean we know it's not a forever option for us.

For the last two weeks we had a mouse in the van. First evidence was a chewed up carrier bag in one of the cupboards along with some droppings. We assumed it had got in just to that cupboard which has a hole down to the outside so cleaned it out and blocked it up. But the mouse was clearly in the van and started making it's presence felt in our food cupboards and in the cab of the van, nibbling through some packets and leaving more droppings. And keeping me awake at night with it's little mousey scuttling and gnawing noises. This was Not Good. We moved all the food into a plastic box, set traps in every palce we could think the mouse could get to, continued to keep everywhere very clean and also strew tumble drier sheets in all sorts of places having googled and found mice in campervans is a pretty common problem and turned up various bits of advice for dealing with them.

After 5 nights of traps with the mouse getting increasingly bolder to the point of clearing all the traps of bait each night at around midnight one night one of the traps went off. Sure enough in the morning we had a dead mouse to dispose of. We left traps set again on subsequent nights to check it was just the single mouse living in the van and it would appear it was, so we've blocked up all holes we can, stuffed more tumble drier sheets in places and are keeping fingers firmly crossed that we won't need to use the traps again. I hated the need to kill it (and infact we had a mix of live capture and killing traps) but sharing Willow with any more bodies, even a tiny one, simply was not a long term option.

Another issue we are still dealing with is damp, condensation and ultimately mould. Willow showed few if any signs of having damp problems when we bought her but then she had not been lived in through the winter. The combination of body heat of four people, cooking and boiling kettles for washing up and drinking and simply breathing in the van as the temperature outside drops means we are constantly wiping down misted up windows. Where possible we are keeping a vent or window open for ventilation but when it's really windy or rainy (as it often has been up here in the Highlands) that isn't feasible. So the kids bunk where we store all the sleeping bags and pillows has to be dried out every night and all the bedding aired for half an hour before bedtime, the curtains and sofa have to be constantly monitored and kept away from the windows, the kids soft toys, our clothes, our towels, our bedding all need to be kept an eye on and made sure they are not stuffed up somewhere going mouldy. We have already chucked out a few things which suffered from a lack of vigilance but hopefully we are on top of it now.

The season has definitely changed now and where we were enjoying T shirt weather (albeit a freak heat wave rather than usual early October conditions) we have now seen snow, rain aplenty and had the van rocked by windy nights. But is is cold. And dark. And wet. Cold is not the most serious of these really - we can get warm by putting more clothes on, we have very good sleeping bags and hot water bottles so once we're cosy in bed we stay warm. Dark is combated with good torches and lanterns but wet is a trickier one. Coming into the van with wet outdoor clothes, even coats is a problem. Where do you put them? Bringing wet things in only serves to exacerbate the condensation issues and when getting through as few clothes as possible is a priority - partially because getting them clean and dry again is expensive and difficult and mostly because you only have a very finite amount of changes of clothing anyway - this is hard.

Finally the miles, the weather and perhaps her age have gotten to Willow again and she is currently residing in the local breakdown recovery yard having spluttered to a halt last Thursday. We had our first need to call on our breakdown cover and were towed to a layby for a couple of nights near to the yard by the very understanding of our situation garage owner before being given a lift to our holiday cottage while Willow is being looked at. As ever the universe (and friends!) seem to have provided in answer to our needs and we had already got a stay with friends lined up in a holiday cottage just 20 miles or so away which we were on our way to when Willow gave up. So while we luxuriate in comfort, heat, light, beds, baths, kitchens and sofas with splendid company Willow will hopefully be sufficiently patched up to get us back down the country again.

We have one last WWOOFing host lined up, which ferry crossings and Willow permitting we'll be heading to next weekend and then we have decided to head back to Sussex for a few weeks to catch up with family and friends and retire Willow for a while. More on that to follow.

Skye's the limit

2011-10-16T20:14:00.000+01:00

Friends will tell you I am guilty of glass-half-full-ism to the extreme. In Nic world everything is fantastic, amazing, wonderful. There are times when this seeing the joy in everything approach means no one believes me when something truly is fantasic, amazing, wonderful of course. A bit like the boy who cried wolf I guess. I am the Nic who cried wonder!

But you really do have to believe me when I report that Skye is all of the above and more.

I can prove it. Look.

We've spent a very happy week travelling around most of the island, spending all but one night in the same closed for the season campsite where you are welcome to park for free. We looked at a couple of properties just to get a handle on what we would get for our money, registered with all the estate agents on the island, spent time in the bigger towns checking out the shopping, culture and community facilities, drove around large chunks of the coastline and tried to get a real feeling of the different parts of Skye.

We were particularly taken with the Sleat peninsula, and loved our visit to Rubha Phoil. We had some beautiful walks including climbing to the Old Man of Storr (I got about halfway and then paused to admire the view and had a lovely chat with a fellow view-admirer about deep stuff like what life is all about. Amazing who you bump into on the side of a mountain. The others climbed to the top) and of course we saw yet more breathtaking scenery and abundant wildlife.

We definitely left part of our hearts behind when we crossed the bridge back off Skye and onto the mainland yesterday evening as the sun set. But that's fine, because we'll be back.

Reasons to be cheerful...

2011-10-16T18:09:00.000+01:00

One: We're free to wonder and wander
Two: The world is beautiful
Three: We can share it with you thanks to Three

One of the most important skills I believe we possess is communication. The ability to articulate ourselves, use language to make our needs, our views, our ideas, our emotions understood and got across to others. There are so many different ways to communicate - talking, writing, art, body language, facial expression, singing, playing instruments, shouting, actions...

I like to talk. I try to adhere to the rule of two eyes, two ears, one mouth and do twice the amount of watching and listening as I do talking, but I do love to talk. I also love to write. I have written something somewhere since I very first learnt to write. With a chunky crayon on scrap paper as a little girl, in countless tear smudged diaries through my teens and in latter years tapped through a keyboard and uploaded to blogs that float somewhere out in cyberspace.

When we embarked on this journey we knew communicating with family, friends, random strangers who found us online and were interested in our adventure, WWOOF hosts would be a priority. We would need some internet access and we researched the options. From talking to friends and looking online we found our about the Mifi from Three. A nifty little device that allows you to connect multiple things to it and creates it's own little wireless hotspot with high speed internet to phones, laptops, games consoles.

For eight happy months we have uploaded blog posts and photos (oh so many photos), downloaded music and streamed iplayer and youtube. We have emailed, shopped, googled, skyped and generally retained our connection to the rest of the world. It is compact, lightweight, has amazing battery life, as good if not better coverage than the various phones we have on different networks, charges by USB / mains / car charger and is an all round vital bit of our kit.

But last weekend disaster struck! The Mifi was disconnected and we were left stranded. But never fear, by the power of technology (anyone else thinking of He Man now?) and friends and truly exceptional service we managed to get a message to Three who swung into action and within hours we had arranged for the nearest post office to accept a parcel for us and 24 hours later we were in reciept of the new and improved version of Mifi on all you can eat tariff

I can't praise Three enough really - their customer service, speed of response and communication skills are faultless and first class. The Mifi is an outstanding product - whether you live in a campervan and travel around like us (admittedly a fairly small niche market!) or are on the road a lot for work, or simply as an very good alternative to home broadband.

My communication brought to you using high tech communication tools and a fantastic communications company. Everyone playing to their strengths.

This post, as with all of the post since we've been on the road is brought to you thanks to the Mifi from Three.

Thinking Ahead

2011-10-09T13:41:00.000+01:00

Half way into the wild camping part of the adventure we've been reluctantly starting to think ahead. We were in a shop buying a lantern earlier this week and telling the guy in there about what we've been doing. He was really interested and asked the tricky question 'how do you think you'll feel going back to real life again then?'. We all laughed and said we didn't really expect we ever would. But of course this current lifestyle is not sustainable. An 11 year old boy and a nearly 9 year old girl cannot keep sharing a bunk forever, Willow has already done so much better than we could have ever hoped with so many miles, so many hills and so much living full time in her. We know that at some point in the not too distant future we will want a home again. A kitchen - to cook and bake and make jam. A lounge with a sofa to stretch out on and bookshelves to fill and plugs to charge up laptops to watch films on and boxes to fill with lego. A bathroom to take long luxurious baths in with fragrant bubbles and space on the side for a glass of wine and a bowl of peanuts and soak for hours. A bedroom with a full size bed and a duvet rather than a sleeping bag and a wardrobe with a choice of clothes rather than a shared plastic box with limited clothing selected for it's durability and ability to be stuffed up small and not show the creases. And space - space to invite friends over, to play in, to loll about in and to close a door on everyone else in the world and just be alone every so often. And a garden - to keep chickens in, to grow food in, to sit in the sunshine with a beer, or to run around being rowdy in.

This leads us towards the 'what happens next?' question. The one we hoped this year would provide an answer to or at the very least scribble out some of the possible answers. And it is. We now have a list of essential and desireable requirements for the place we end up calling home. Top of the list is a view, something with water. Be it river, ocean, lake or loch we all feel very strongly that we want to be near water, able to see it from our windows. We need land, enough to grow food and keep animals on. Not too much, we have seen an almost self sufficient model on as little as under an acre on our travels and have been inspired by clever ways to make the most of available space, use polytunnels and greenhouses and adopt permaculture principles to ensure we are using space as efficiently as possible. We want to be mortgage free which means buying outright with the equity in our current home and we want out outgoings to be as small as possible which means self sufficient or at least close to it for energy and food, stripping back material needs and consuming. We want to bring in income by methods that are meaningful, soul feeding and rewarding - finding work that we are good at and enjoy. We have some ideas but will need to explore them further and consider our geographical location before making final decisions on that. We need to live somewhere that meet our needs as individuals and as a family, providing social, educational, community opportunities, that will support Dragon and Star both now and through the coming years of growing independance.

There. Not too big an ask surely?! This year has been an amazing journey of demonstrating to us what we can do without, what we miss and what truly is important to us, what makes us happy and when everything is stripped away what are the first things you need to claw back. We have had to let go of some ideals, change our thinking and make sacrifices. We have had to roll with the punches, think on our feet and adapt to an ever changing background of circumstances. We have learnt so very, very much about ourselves, the world around us, other people and what really matters. I have every confidence in us working through this next stage and making our next set of dreams come true.

We've been talking about this bit of the adventure at the half way point of the wild camping, recalling how much we've done in three weeks and speculating on what the next three weeks might hold. We still have a wish list of whale spotting, northern lights and sea eagles to tick off. Later today we are heading to the Isle of Skye and will start looking at property with a view to starting to hone that list above a bit more.

Ady
Bad: Emptying the toilet out! I hate doing it, I worry about doing it in public toilets and I always clean up afterwards in the toilets which means I am cleaning toilets every day or so.
Good: The views. We see the most amazing, outstanding views every day.
Learnt: It's so different living this way all the time rather than just for a holiday on a campsite. It's minimalistic and stripped back to real basics.
Best moment of wild camping so far: Doing the washing in the loch! It was a real magical moment to be on the shores of Loch Maree with biblical connections where people were baptised and cured by the water in the early morning sunshine washing my pants!

Dragon:
Bad: Missing being with other people. When we were WWOOFing we were meeting new people, and children, all the time. While we're wild camping it's just us, so less people to play with.
Good: We're seeing so much more new stuff every day. At home we never saw anything new, at WWOOFing we did see some new stuff but this three weeks we have seen so many new things - wildlife and scenery. I used to watch Springwatch, Autumnwatch, David Attenborough wildlife shows and be in awe, now I think I have seen more myself.
Learnt: What a treat electricity is! When we lived in a house we could just plug stuff in whenever we want, now it's so precious we save energy and take it in turns to charge stuff up. I learnt lots of new stuff at Knockan Crag about rock formation and geology.
Best moment of wild camping so far: Seeing the salmon leap. It was top of my list of things I wanted to see and on our first day of wild camping we watched them leap at Shin Falls.

Star:
Bad: Going back into civilisation. I didn't like visiting shops and seeing traffic. I also was sad when we saw some crows attacking and killing a seagull.
Good: All the wildlife! I've seen salmon jumping, red squirrel, golden eagles, red kites, seals, dolphins, guillemots including a chick blown off course by some high winds, red deer and lots of other birds. I like the views, my favourites are ones with water - I liked Loch Ness best.
Learnt: I think I've learnt more wild camping than at lots of hosts. I've learnt about caves, mountains and how they got made, how lochs formed (they are like giant puddles left over from the ice age), lots about animals, about history of Scotland - picts, ancient woodlands, extinct wildlife, how dangerous minks are, clearances (when people left their homes to make way for sheep farming) and loads more.
Best moment of wild camping so far: Seeing our first definite golden eagle.

Nic
Bad: Spent so much money on petrol than we'd originally budgeted for which will limit the second half of our time. I'd love to tour more for the next few weeks but finances will dictate that we do not travel as far as we just can't afford the petrol.
Good: It's all just so much better than I could have hoped for. I knew Scotland was pretty but it's actually breathtakingly gorgeous, I knew there was abundant wildlife but didn't expect to see it all as easily as we have. I find it hard to comprehend that this is the same country as I own a house in, albeit it at the opposite end on the south coast. There are so many less people, so much more space, we really do live alongside the wildlife and nature instead of trampling all over it. The air is cleaner, the weather is wilder, the landscape more dramatic.
Learnt: Loads! I've learnt that I am definitely at my happiest when spending time alongside Dragon and Star. I missed then while we were WWOOFing - I missed the little incidental conversations, the just hanging out with them, the eating dinner together just us four, the exclusive family time that the four of us need to ourselves and is so precious. This is rather an intense and full on recuperation period from six months of eating other people's food at other people's dinner tables and I am aware of the irony of Dragon saying he missed friends and other children - clearly there is a balance in between living with other people all the time and not seeing anyone but the other WW all the time but I have been doing lots of thinking about Home Education and the future and I know the way it works best for us is just how it has been the last three weeks - walking along slowly, hand in hand, discovering as we go.
Best moment of wild camping so far: It's hard to choose one really, I keep flicking through my memory like a photograph album. There was one magical moment when we rounded a corner coming down a mountainside in Willow and suddenly the ocean spread out below us with the Summer Isles and all four of us said 'whoa!' at the same time. There was sunrise at Loch Maree when Star and I went paddling in the loch. Watching Dragon and Ady fly a kite while Star and I jumped through rainbows on the most beautiful beach I've ever seen. There was looking up one evening while we were eating dinner and spotting a red deer stag silhouetted on the hill just above us. But I suspect I am being greedy so shall choose this moment, right now. When we are halfway through what has already proved to be an adventure beyond our wildest expectations and still has as much ahead as it does behind and the promise of so much more to come.

This week has been woodland walks on which we saw red squirrels, time at the coast when we spotted seals, dolphins, more golden eagle sightings. It's also sadly had very tedious but necessary visits back into retail world for food, petrol, footwear and clothing supplies (kids feet grown, my jeans size shrunk!), a lantern. It's made for altogether less gorgeous photographs but does mean we are all far more comfortable!

at the Calendonian Canal

Caledonia Canal

A guillemot that had been blown off course

At Plodda Falls

Plodda Falls

Dog Falls

Back at Loch Ness

seals at Cromarty

overlooking the Skye Bridge

At Tollies Red Kite centre

red kites

Skye

Going Wild

2011-10-02T21:07:00.000+01:00

We've had two whole weeks 'wild camping' in the highlands of Scotland and are back in a campsite for an overnight touch with modern conveniences again!

We have parked in a different place for every overnight stop, every meal time and every cup of tea and woken up to a different view every morning, each one more stunning than the one before. Sunrise and sunset are particularly spectacular, as is rainy weather, sunny weather... infact do you know what? Pretty much everything is spectacular up here!

Challenges have included emptying our toilet - we have not yet had to dig holes thanks to public toilets (we don't use chemicals in our loo so it is just waste being flushed down the toilet), filling up our drinking water - most public loos have drinking quality water in their basins so we can fill up our containers using a beaker, although once or twice water has been a yellow or brown tinted colour so we have boiled it before use as a precautionary measure. Cleaning ourselves has proved a slight challenge - we've made do with flannel washes in the van, some handy public showers in Ullapool and I've washed my hair in various public loos around the area. My favourite wash was a dunk in a loch though!

We have been far too busy walking, playing on beaches, exploring and spotting wildlife to do any hunting or fishing and thus far our foraging has been limited to some handfuls of blackberries picked and eaten along the way whilst walking but we've managed to bake bread, cookies and pastry in the van and had pizza, pie, curry and various pasta meals.

There is a wealth of free things to do, with so many educational signs and information boards, visitor centres and museums to visit that we are ending every day feeling educated, entertained and amused. We've seen golden eagles, red deer, seals and leaping salmon.

our campsite tonight, in Shielbridge

on a walk earlier today, blue skies, sunshine and T shirts - in October!

Dragon and I making the suspension bridge wobble at Corrieshalloch Gorge. It was very exciting! Ady didn't like it.

another day, another gorgeous view

the road from Applecross peninsula - up in the clouds

blatantly ignoring the danger signs!

off for another walk

red deer stag right outside our van as dusk fell one night

sunset near Gairloch

another night, another overnight stopover

Loch Maree

visit to a Smokehouse, we watched the whole process of smoking salmon, from dealing with whole fresh salmon to trimming, slicing and packaging the smoked one. Then had some for lunch!

more stopping in beautiful places

stopped for the night again

Slattadale Forest at Loch Maree

We played pooh sticks on the bridge at Flowerdale Falls

Knockan Crag, a long walk up but well worth it for the view

sunset at Knockan Crags


dancing

van-baking (like home baking but in a smaller space!) pastry for a steak pie and cookies for pudding

another mountain climbed

at Knockan Crags, learning about geology


viewpoint over Lochinver

looking out over StachPolleigh

red deer stag with several hinds

more lochs and mountains

red deer being majestic

roadside view

at the Falls of Shin, we saw salmon leaping

golden eagle - wish we had a better camera!

some people don't take our group pictures seriously enough...

sunrise over Loch Maree as seen through Willow's window

at Beinn Eighe - the first national nature reserve

Loch Maree


just driving along...

Beinn Eighe

morning paddle at loch maree

Across the top and back again

2011-09-24T00:53:00.000+01:00

A very speedy two day catch up as I'm running low on laptop battery and I couldn't get signal last night for the Mifi from Three which is what enables us to blog on the road.

So, where are we? We're currently parked up for the night near Lochinver which is a few miles south of the very north west tip of Scotland. Yesterday saw us reach as far across the north coast as you can go by road - and what a road it is. Twisty, turning, windy and up and down with a new delight around every single corner. I am constantly torn between looking up into the skies for golden eagles while admiring the rainbows which seem a constant feature with the sunshine and showers weather we have had this week, or the lochs and coastline for a glimpse of seals, dolphins, whales or otters, or looking out at the landscape - misty topped mountains, sweeping pine forests, glorious coverings of heather and gorse all changing into their autumnal colours with the chance of spotting deer or maybe even a wildcat.

We have been so very lucky in ticking off our list of Things We'd Love To See and our luck is holding fast. Yesterday we spent ages pouring over our bird books having watched a very large bird soaring over us to see if we could identify it as a golden eagle. We were fairly sure judging by it's flight pattern and sillhouette but it had been very high in the sky. Later in the afternoon though we were treated to a low flying very definite golden eagle sighting, close enough to see the golden feathers and everything! Today we saw a red deer stag at fairly close range too, long enough to even capture a photo, although you will have to look very closely to spot him camouflaged as he is in the heather.

We've explored the first chamber of a cave, complete with waterfall, spent time on beaches flying Dragon's kite, combing for shells and seaglass and searching for fossils, driven for hours just soaking up the landscape and had every meal and cup of tea in a new and different location.

At Smoo Cave

stunning landscapes

beautiful beaches

flying his kite

Seals and Landmarks

2011-09-21T23:07:00.000+01:00

The big news today is we made it! We've been to the north east most tip of mainland UK! Yep, against all odds, Willow the van and the four of us made it all the way to John O Groats. We can't really get any further from our starting point, so if we just have to take the handbrake off and roll all the way back home we got this far!

Having parked up for the night in an unknown location as it was pitch dark we were very pleasantly surprised to pull back the curtains this morning and find ourselves overlooking the stunning scenery of Gills Bay, overlooking Stroma island with some of the most impressive waves and white horses I've ever seen.

We walked down to the beach and explored the rock pools, looked at the shells and Dragon chipped away at a piece of slate to present me with a heart shaped coaster.

for me, from Dragon. He's so lovely.


it was so windy Ady had to put the camera inside Willow and then dash back outside to get this shot!

We retreated back to Willow for tea /coffee/hot chocolate and were treated to the seals below us playing in the surf, riding the waves, coming out to flop about on the rocks and sand and generally entertain us.

Then we headed back east to John O Groats. The visitor centre was an interesting selection of very overpriced gift shops, several empty units, an excellent museum which was free, a very brightly painted castle type building in a state of disrepair and some toilets with a 20p admission charge. I was desperate for a wee so ducked under the turnstyle as Ady was taking too long to find change in the van and when I came out the attendant told me off! I paid of course and infact later went back in with another 20p and my shampoo, a beaker and a towel and washed my hair in the sink there deciding if I had to invest money I would get more than a quick wee for my cash!!!

right to the top!

quite tempted to carry on to the north pole!

amazing paintwork, if rather random

checking out the information

It was very windy and rainy so after taking the obligatory tourist-y pictures we bought some postcards and hopped back into Willow for lunch and hot drinks. The weather then cheered up enough for us to head slightly further along the coast and walk almost to Duncansby Head (although in reading about it we didn't quite make it to the tip as we missed seeing the stacks). This took in the amazing sea of the Pentland Firth which is wild, undulating, unforgiving and very, very dramatic and beautiful. It rather reminded me of Star.... there was no pattern to the sea at all, it appeared to be heading in all directions at once with waves breaking everywhere and a surface like a very wobbly jelly. The beach was made of shell-sand, larger and smaller broken fragments of all colours of gorgeous shells. We had the company of a group of three seals who really seemed to interact with us, edging closer and even following us curiously along our path. It's times like these when we so wish we had a better camera as we simply don't do what we've seen with our eyes justice.

the seal

check out those waves

wild, untamed, dangerous....

throwing himself into life

On the walk back Star was telling me all the different places she wants to visit one day, the animals she wants to see, the experiences she wants to have. I told her that if I can teach her anything it should be never to be trapped by life; to fret about paying a mortgage, having new clothes or wishing for things she'll never be, but to spend her life living it, having adventures, chasing experiences, following her heart and dreams. She slipped her hand in mine and promised she would learn that lesson from me. I hope she does.

We drove back to Thurso for petrol (we now have a full tank) and milk and then onwards in search of an overnight stop. We are parked up at Melvich now, overlooking the sea again but with a large strip of heather and wild looking land infront of us. I can see the lights of Thurso twinkling to the right and a lighthouse sending it's searching light out to the left but infront is nothing but black.

We spent nothing but our petrol today as we'd already got dinner from yesterday - pork chops and veg from the reduced to clear sections of supermarkets and some leftover spuds donated by a friend last week. Delicious.

Once it got dark and we'd all eaten we turned all the lights off in the van and got Star's night vision monocular out which was her Christmas present last year and has been hugely under used so far. We all had a look and although we didn't see anything out there - I think it is far too wet, windy and wild really - we have pledged to have a 15 minute darkness time after dinner every night and use them wherever we are, so fingers crossed we see some interesting nighttime sights too.

We finished our day with hot chocolate (some of us laced with Baileys) and a couple of chapters of story all snuggled up together on the bed.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

We roam around, and round and round and round

2011-09-20T23:49:00.000+01:00

Breakfast near Golspie

Lunch at Helmsdale

Dinner at Dunnet Head

and are currently parked up for the night at Gills Bay. Oh yes, we get around!

So today saw us hitting the most northern part of the UK mainland, a bit of a landmark for us, coming from the south coast all those months ago.

We've also taken in Badbea, the Flow Country and miles of gorgeous landscapes including coasts, lochs and highlands. We spent ages looking in our bird book identifying the large birds of prey we knew were not buzzards or golden eagles and decided they were ospreys. We spotted a deer and were all very excited by Ady noticing a dark shadow run across the road looking like it might have been a wildcat - that will have to remain unconfirmed however!

we found this cartoon illustration amusing!

at Badbea

another cautionary sign - poor Willow!

reading about life in the 1800s at Badbea

wind farm on the Flow Country, I always find them slightly eerie and rather beautiful


pretty harbour at Lybster

Today we managed to stick to budget on food and have also bought dinner for tomorrow. We are finding it tough to do much in the way of hunting, fishing or foraging just yet so have been relying on shopping at the end of the day and getting reduced to clear bargains! We do have a very good stock of tinned and packet food in the van too but are reserving that for days when we fail to find a supermarket or have run out of funds! As warned petrol is likely to be our biggest expense - fuel is not cheap, petrol stations are few and far between and the hilly roads mean our consumption is high. We were prepared for this though and having already finished the east coast section of our week despite only being on day three we are anticipating a few days when we do very little mileage which will help.

Water is proving a potential issue. We are carrying 3 x 5 litre bottles and some in the water tank of Willow, but only about half full as the extra weight will mean using more petrol so isn't cost effective. We are getting through a good 5 litres a day just in washing teeth, drinking, cooking and washing up - the trouble with cheap foods like rice and pasta is that they require a fair amount of water! Today we managed to use a public toilets to empty our portaloo and fill up our water bottles though which means we are empty and full in the right places again! We had anticipated using a campsite once a week to have showers, charge things up and fill and empty. We are now hoping to avoid that if possible and planning to try hair washing and body washing using hot water in a plastic trug - that would save at least £15 - a day and a half's budget!

We invested in various charging solutions along the way and have two freeloader solar chargers, which are reasonable in very good sunny days and can charge a mobile phone / games console but are most useful for storing charge from the mains when charged using a USB off a computer. We also bought an invertor charger to plug into a cigarette lighter and give power to either a 3 pin plug or a USB which takes care of all our charging needs. We have been really pleased with it's performance and today charged up both our mobiles and my netbook from it while driving along. We also have a power pack jump starter which can be used to charge things and then recharged from the mains for days when we don't do enough driving to use the cigarette lighter option.

It's early days for this part of the adventure but so far we keep pinching ourselves for how lucky we are to wake each morning in such gorgeous locations with the freedom to travel as far or near as we wish in search of yet more adventures and fantastic places to park up and enjoy the view.

Wandering more than ever

2011-09-19T22:24:00.000+01:00

We now have seven weeks off from WWOOFing! With just one host left to visit we are almost finished with the WWOOFing part of our journey.

When we waved goodbye to Daisy Cottage we headed across from the west coast to the east coast of Scotland, stopping overnight for our first taste of wild camping at Loch Ness. We literally pulled into a layby on the roadside, put down the levellers on Willow and that was us home for the night! We had a full on panoramic view of Loch Ness with the sun going down, rainbows across the skies (typical sunshine and showers weather) and then a beautiful moon rising over the loch casting reflections and shadows over the rippling water. We sat and admired the view, sung some songs and toasted the next exciting chapter of our adventure.

the view from Willow

We've been to Loch Ness before, last summer, and fell in love with it there then. We went out on the actual loch in a boat that time and it is such a magical, atmospheric place you can feel the mystery and intrigue in the air. Despite spending lots of time gazing out of Willow's window we didn't see Nessie this time!

Then followed a fabulous week camping with two sets of very good friends. Dragon celebrated his 11th birthday, we saw dolphins, seals and other sealife daily, the children all played on the beach flying kites, got wet most days in the sea, did some fishing and us adults enjoyed each others company in rather less energetic pursuits. We ate haggis, drank whisky, gorged on tablet and had a very memorable evening sitting on the beach round a fire toasting marshmallows and gazing at the stars.

Yesterday morning we waved goodbye to our friends, returning to 'normal lives' and we headed further north. We have a touring map of Scotland, a fistful of tourist information leaflets, a list of 'things we'd like to see' and a very small daily budget - and no particular place to be for the next six weeks!

Our loose plan is to head towards John O Groats by the end of this week, a distance of just over 100 miles. From there we will go all the way along the very north coast over the course of the following week and then travel down the west coast over the following weeks before heading over to the Isle of Eigg by ferry for our final host at the end of October. We'll keep that plan pretty fluid so if we get distracted by shiny things or the wind picks us up and blows us in a certain direction it may well change!

Yesterday we got as far as Bonar Bridge, going via Tarbat Discovery Centre where we all increased our local knowledge and learnt about Picts and early Scottish history, marvelled at the crypt and enjoyed a film about archaeological discoveries. It felt like a welcome return to Home Education for Dragon, Star and I who used to spend all our days chasing interesting conversations and finding hands on ways to learn. We've very much missed our previous freedom to find ourselves in an interesting place with questions to find answers to and are looking forward to plenty more such opportunities over the next few weeks. Our 'home' for the night was a layby overlooking a loch on one side and a large area of woodland on the other.

Today we were on a quest to find the salmon - at this time of year the wild Atlantic salmon are returning to the rivers they were born in to spawn, which involves leaping upstream. It's a dramatic and death-defying journey that few manage to make and as with all wild animal spotting you are very much relying on all sorts of factors, mostly luck! First on our list of likely places was the Falls of Shin, which has a visitor centre including an exhibition of information about the salmon. After a quick look around that we headed down to the waterfalls and were the only people there. Amazingly within just a couple of minutes Ady was yelling that he had seen one, closely followed by the rest of us! We struggled to get any half decent pictures (our camera is really not up to wildlife action shots!) but the memories will last a lifetime.

that black dot is a salmon!


at the Falls of Shin

We had lunch in the carpark (hurrah for our mobile kitchen!) and then followed some brown signs to the Ferrycroft Visitor Centre. What an excellent - and *free* place this was! We had a great couple of hours there learning loads, participating in all the interactive and hands on exhibits, learning about wildlife, history and more. Dragon and Star loved playing in the grounds too and reading all the information boards about local wildlife and farmed animals.

We drove through some beautiful, very 'Scottish' landscapes with heather, pines, highland cattle and sheep and soaring buzzards in some very blue skies. We ended up stopping for the night overlooking the sea again with a fantastic view of a very beautiful sunset tonight.

Daisy Cottage

2011-09-11T22:23:00.000+01:00

We've just finished two weeks at our penultimate host, in the fishing village of Tarbert on the Kintyre peninsula in Argyll, Scotland. On the west coast the whole area is very beautiful and muse-tastic. The town of Tobermory, on the isle of Mull is the inspiration for kids TV show Balamory, the nearby Mull of Kintyre was ever immortalised by Paul McCartney, the isle of Skye is also nearby and there is a whole lot more to the place than tartan, red deer and shortbread!Our hosts, Ed, Carina and their son Peter are truly lovely people. Kind, generous, warm and welcoming, they went out of their way to ensure we had a fab time WWOOFing for them. Our hours of work were short, we had two bedrooms in their lovely home, ate with them every meal, were taken out exploring the area and on our final night they took us out for a meal.Our work was largely based in their new house, a new build using eco building techniques and materials. We did some filling holes, some oiling woodwork, plenty of painting, some digging up spuds, some building a woodpile housing, some stacking wood. At the current house we did plenty of woodchopping, some spud sorting and finally we spent some time at the local Healing Garden, a community project in the grounds of the medical centre using herbs and other healing plants. Our task was cutting a hedge down to let light in and views out.

Our time off was the best though - we explored the amazing beaches, had walks around the town and the scenic landscapes, spent time on an island in the harbour having rowed across with our hosts in their canoe. We attended a local smallholders gathering and had a go at felting and watched a green woodworking demo, sampled local produce and spent lots of time fishing. We saw seals, buzzards, gannets, gulls, cormorants and jellyfish and we caught fish!

Dragon:Bad: That our hosts son had to go to school. I missed playing with him while he was out at school each day.Good: I enjoyed eating mackerel that we had caught ourselves.Learnt: How to fish - how to cast, what bait to use and so on.Star:Bad: we didn't see the seal on our last dayGood: We saw the seal every other day and I found £7 under the shelves in the local Co OpLearnt: There was a local beach made completely of shells, that had been discarded by fishermen over the years.Ady:Bad: Leaving! It was the first host I felt really sad to leave.Good: I really enjoyed living with such kind and trusting hosts. Learnt: I learnt loads about Scotland from Ed, his knowledge about the area they lived in was huge.Nic:Bad: The midges! We'd been warned and if we settle here we will have to find solutions but on this visit I did get midged and I did have nasty itchy bits.Good: It was great to be at hosts in such beautiful surroundings. I really fell in love with Scotland.Learnt :About fishing, about green building, about Scotland.

Second Catch and Lucky Find

2011-09-09T23:19:00.000+01:00

More breaking news - Ady caught a fish! Another mackrel, another challenge met, another dinner provided.

Willow has needed a bit of attention to her plugs and leads and general starting in the damp. We decided as we're now in the land and season of mist we'd get that dealt with so took her along to the local garage here in Tarbert, Hi Way Motors.

Not only did they do a fab job - she is running really well now, they also noted the blog address on the back of Willow and have been having a read of our adventures. They did us a bargain price and added a very special message to the invoice.

We've already sent someone else in their direction (a lovely American couple Ady helped change a wheel on their rental car when they had a puncture) and highly recommend them for anyone else passing through this way. If Willow has any breakdowns while we're on this next leg we know where to get towed to for sure!

Ding, ding! Round one.

2011-09-05T21:27:00.000+01:00

Just thought you all would like to know I caught my first fish today!

And we had it for dinner and it was delicious. Exciting times ahead...

Rolling with it

2011-09-02T16:55:00.000+01:00

We found out yesterday that our current hosts will be our penultimate ones as the next place we had lined up for WWOOFing at has had to cancel due to ill health. This leaves us with about six weeks worth of free time between hosts.

We do have a reserve list of hosts and at least three places who asked us to get back in touch nearer the time when we approached them about WWOOFing earlier this year. We also of course have the WWOOFing book and could contact any of the hosts listed but we are planning to take the time to travel instead and see how we fare on a limited budget.

Our current hosts have a great knowledge of Scotland and are able to recommend some interesting places to head for so our plan is to draw up a rough route taking in all the various sights, based around petrol stations to ensure Willow is kept topped up (apparently they can be few and far between up here). We'll keep some very basic food rations in the van so we are able to make bread, rice and pasta etc. and then try to top that up with what we can find along the way. It will be exciting, we will be pioneers, we will learn new skills and emerge as hunters, gatherers, foragings. Or we'll go to bed hungry and miserable and all get really hacked off with each other when our blood sugar levels dip too low and there is no milk for tea!

Phase one of our catch it, kill it, cook it, eat it adventures began yesterday with fishing. Dragon, Star and I have never fished before although Ady did a spot of fishing in his younger days. We all had fishing rods - Ady and the kids got them for Christmas and my lovely friend Helen bought me a rod as a leaving present. Our fab friend Mich bought Dragon a fishing book so we were well prepared.

Now success is a real subjective thing I feel - sure the fact we caught nothing could be considered a failure but we're choosing to view the afternoon as a coaching session, learning how to thread up the rods, various knots to attach various things, we know about ledger weights, coffin weights, bullet weights and the right times to use them, lures, spinners, bait, half blood knots, loops knots, what a swivel is, how to cast, how to bring in two lines which have crossed each other. Surely we need to save the actual learning how to bring a fish in, kill it, gut it and boast about how big it is for another day? We did see a seal, jellyfish, starfish and various seabirds too which I know won't appease hunger but perhaps we can just dine out on our stories?!

We have another week here and then a week at a campsite with friends after which we embark on the next bit of the adventure. Where internet signal allows I will update daily with how we are faring on finding somewhere to park up for the night and something to put in our tummies.

Zone Three - Bonnie Scotland

2011-08-30T23:08:00.000+01:00

After a very lovely five days camping back in Llangollen, North Wales with our sister in law, nieces and nephew we did a 250 miles trip (Willow's biggest in one day) trip from Wales to England to Scotland, followed two days later by a 70 mile trip taking in two ferries to arrive at our current host in Tarbert, Argyll on Kintyre.

In many ways we have all been holding out for the Scottish leg of our journey. It marks the end of our planned WWOOFing adventure and a change of pace as we only have three hosts booked in three months. When I was organising these hosts, nearly a year ago I left lots of time inbetween each host to ensure we had lots of flexibility incase we wanted to stay longer in places or take more time off. As it happens we are feeling ready for a break from WWOOFing, or certainly larger gaps inbetween hosts and are very keen to spend some time covering some of our other plans for this year.

A side objective of the adventure was always to spend time living with less, consuming less, spending less and trying to live closer to the land. We have fishing rods and an air rifle with us in the van, along with various foraging guides so we are hoping to make do with very basic rations stocked up each week in the van supplemented with what we can pick up along the way. Here in Scotland relaxed rules about wild camping and parking to stay along the roadside mean we will be able to ensure the van has sufficient fuel for Willow and food and water for us and head off for adventures, stopping whenever the mood - or a beautiful view takes us.

We have a long list of things we want to see; Golden eagles, seals, whales, dolphins, otters, leaping salmon, the northern lights, the Loch Ness monster!!!

We are really enjoying our current host - who I blog about in more detail once we have finished here and have already fallen in love with Scotland to the point of checking out all sorts of things with regard to maybe settling here one day. We have our final three months of our year planned out now and will be heading back in a far more southerly direction for the colder winter months of mid December, January and February, returning to an indoor location which we're looking forward to as a fitting end to our first chapter of this year, before deciding what happens next.


with family in Llangollen from L-R Ady, Dragon, Cousin J, Cousin L, SIL J, Nic, Star, Cousin M

saying goodbye at the campsite with Willow in the background. Star not being patient!

At the viewpoint

on our second ferry that day - rough, rainy, windy and so much fun!

Tarbert, Argyll

a genuine Scottish thistle

Fairfield

2011-08-24T19:25:00.000+01:00

Our final Zone Two host took us back slightly south to the edge of the Yorkshire dales. It was the host so far that is furthest from my original expectation of WWOOFing with no livestock or growing to speak of, fully on-grid although with definite green and eco leanings. We spent two weeks there and it was rather unlike any other host in that we were mostly doing general maintenance type work on the house and garden. The hosts live in a beautiful big house with large grounds including a river running through and a slice of woodland. They comprise a couple, who have two grown up daughters (one of whom was back for the week during our second week there as she was helping with caring), two teenaged fostered brothers, teenaged foster twin girls, a girl with cerebral palsy and for our second week a girl with Downs and learning / behaviour issues. Also resident at various points during our stay were the hosts sister and her son, the hosts cousin and various teenaged friends of the children.

We did a fair bit of mowing and strimming, plenty of humping and dumping (we moved chicken houses, rocks, big glass panels, lumps of wood and more), lots of household-y stuff - we removed, sanded, varnished and re-hung three interior doors, some chainsawing of wood and some building stone walls. Ady did some clearing gutters and we helped with some solar hot water panel making.

The children spent most of their time playing in the garden, building dams and making dens near the river. They caught up on some film watching, went swimming in the local open air pool and enjoyed hanging out with the children at the host.

We were very much treated as part of the family and Dragon and Star were invited along on all the trips and outings the children there went on - often they chose to stay behind with us - parks lose their appeal in their eyes when there are riverbanks and treedens to play at, open farms where you can pay to feed the animals are less fun when you have spent the last six months living on actual working farms feeding animals every day.

We had some great times exploring the local area, either with our hosts or at their suggestion and saw various local landmarks, had some great walks, spent time watching kingfishers hunting on the garden pond when the downpours of heavy rain flooded the riverbank and saw them out of their nests. The real highlight though was a trip to a local cave for our first taste of caving, which included getting utterly soaked, scrambling through caverns and tunnels, wading through underground lakes and rivers, marveling at stalactites and stalacmites, switching off our head torches and sitting in the pitch darkness, abseiling down drops and trying (and in my case failing) to climb back up them again. What an exhilarating and unique experience!

We also got to have a turn at cooking dinner (always lovely to have some time in the kitchen - we both miss cooking), played lots of games, spent evenings chatting and generally enjoyed getting to know a whole host (pardon the pun!) of new people.

Ady:
Bad: The usual WWOOFers accomodation is a straw bale bunkhouse, which was dark, damp and rather smelly. We spent the first three nights sleeping in there which I really struggled with, before moving into the main house. Our hosts kindly found space for us to sleep in the main house and from then on our accomodation was fine.
Good: We were made very welcome and were very much a part of the family; sharing mealtimes, entertainment, trips out etc. with everyone there. It was excellent generosity and hospitality and I really enjoyed being part of it.
Learnt: I learnt loads about being with and caring for profoundly disabled children. What their needs are, what care they need, how to interact with them. I really enjoyed that and would now feel much more confident in being around children with such special needs.

Dragon:
Bad: That we didn't get to sleep in the strawbale house for the whole time we were there!
Good: I really enjoyed playing by the river and I saw kingfishers.
Learnt: About caving - the whole world looked different from underground. There was no grass, you couldn't see the sky up above and it felt like being on the moon. It was a very good experience, I'm glad we went there.

Star:
Bad: There were no jobs Mummy & Daddy did that we could really join in with.
Good: That we saw kingfishers, the hosts were really nice people. I really liked going caving.
Learnt: I had a go at sanding the doors and that was something I had not done before.

Nic:
Bad: There were a couple of aspects of our time at this host that I struggled with. The first was the overall environment not really being what I had expected. The listing mentioned looking after chickens, working in the vegetable garden and being involved in alternative technology. What we actually spent time doing was mowing lawns, sanding doors, tidying a workshop and moving rocks about. I also found the busyness of the house something I needed to escape from every so often. We were never less than 14 around the dinner table which had me sloping off to the bedroom to read for half an hour every so often. I found the atmosphere of friction with teens, children with very severe disabilities and the pressure of wanting to be sure my own childrens' needs were being met quite intense.
Good: Once again my good is going to be 'the people'. I really enjoyed spending time with the various people there one to one. I found people with ideas and ways of life similar to my own and those I am seeking, I found people with incredibly different beliefs and ways of being. I enjoyed discussion and debate and swapping life stories, I enjoyed learning about parenting styles different but equally considered and thought out to my own. I learnt from spending time in the company of parents and teens and finding myself empathising with both sides - something I hope I am able to draw upon when Dragon and Star are older and pushing and pulling in different directions to mine. We were shown kindness, generosity, warmth and affection and feel priviledged to have spent time in this family home and shared their lives for a couple of weeks.
Learnt: I didn't actually acquire any new skills at this host, but as I am firmly of the belief that it's all but impossible to live for one day without learning anything so certainly can't have spent a fortnight in a different environment without learning something. On that basis I learnt about fostering, about caring for disabled children, about living in a small village in a tightknit community, about caving and about keeping a house with so many occupants running day in, day out.

The important things in life...

2011-08-08T00:15:00.000+01:00

This week we have had some time with my parents, staying in a holiday cottage in Silverdale in the southern part of the Lake District. A literal and figurative recharge of batteries.

We had plenty of time to chat and reflect and will have much to say in our next couple of blogposts as we start to think about what happens next and where we go from here but we certainly managed to get healthy doses of the things that are important to us including:

Baths, beaches and baking - the lure of bubble baths, particularly when accompanied by a glass of wine, a bowl of nuts and a good book (for adults) or the freedom to splash as much as you like and not even have to wash your hair (for children) cannot be underestimated. When we lived in a house I used to bath recreationally, it was almost like a hobby. I don't actually miss baths anywhere near as much as I feared I would but I do have a personal top five list of Baths I Have Most Enjoyed In My Life which possibly qualifies me as someone who loves them more than the average ;). Beaches are something we are definitely lovers of and indeed we lived only a mile away from a beach back at home. We have not spent very much time at the beach so far this year and a coastal final destination seems likely for us given how much we have missed splashing in the sea, collecting sea glass, pebbles and other treasure, listening to seagulls and gazing out into the waves and of course going home with sand in our shoes. Baking is probably specific to me again - I loved being able to bake bread each day, make a cake for my Dad's birthday and even pondered some jam making while we were at the cottage. I am looking forward to having a full size kitchen rather than a four foot by one foot space with everything crammed in again one day.

Woodland, wildlife and walking. We were very lucky that the route to the beach was through a woodland, so we got to enjoy two pleasures in one trip each time (practically daily!). The woods were gorgeous; full of deer, birds and bugs, tiny froglets, baby toads, sloworms and other such treasures. They were also beautifully green and lush, generally damp and full of that lovely woody smell that freshly rained on trees have. The wildlife also spotted that week included crabs at the beach and various seabirds (all sorts of gulls, cormorants), kestrals and buzzards and woodpeckers. We walked every day; usually a good 5 miles or so which made appreciation of the baths and baking all the greater :)

Family, friends and feedback. We are so very lucky to have been visited or been able to visit along the way with family and friends. We have made new friends along the way and this is one of the huge highlights of this year for us - meeting people and forging new friendships as we go. Dragon and Star have always been close siblings but this year seems to have brought them ever closer together and the four of us now have so many shared adventures, anecdotes and moments that I know we will remember and treasure forever. We are already starting to refer to earlier times along our journey with 'do you remember when we were at...?' and 'wasn't it funny when.... said...'. The feedback is more than just a gratuitous f word because it would fit neatly into my three groups of alliterative threes - it refers to the comments we get on this blog, the emails and texts and phonecalls from friends along the way, the input various hosts have had in talking to us about why they do things the way they do and what we might do next, the conversations with people we have had, the chats the four of are constantly having as we go along, the good, bad and learnt records from each host and the general tossing abot of ideas and plans and hopes and dreams that shaped how we planned this year, how we are conducting it as we go along and what we are thinking we might do next. It's a rollercoaster ride and hearing the screams and laughter of the other three people riding along side us give us all courage to carry on and knowing we have people along listening and joining in for part of the journey is what makes it all the more exciting to be living and recounting. It was great to have time with my parents this week and get their take on this last installment since we'd seen them six weeks ago.

We've had a weekend just the four of us in Morecambe, mostly on the beach building sandcastles. Tomorrow we're off to the next host for a two week stay.

Durham

2011-08-01T13:08:00.000+01:00

We have just finished a two week stay at a community in County Durham. A 15 acre area of woodland, dwellings and organic growing space. It is home to a small community made up of two families - both with two adults and two children. The children are all boys - aged 4, 4, 9 and 10, and three out of the four of them are Home Educated so Dragon and Star fitted right in.

They have been on the land for nearly ten years and started their time there in yurts and geodomes while building their current dwelling - a straw bale, two storey house. They have now outgrown that home and a second house - a fantastic three storey home, timber framed with straw bale infill, clay render and cob mix covered with a lime render outer layer is close to completion. Power is by way of a wind turbine, solar panels and bottle gas for cooking along with wood burning stoves. Water is harvested rainwater for everything other than drinking water which is brought onto site although we learnt on the day we left that tests on the water in their well has been cleared as fine for human consumption so they are now totally self sufficient in water.

There is a small flock of sheep, who graze and are sometimes eaten or fleeces used and a larger flock of chickens, for eggs and meat. The main use of the land though is the veg box scheme run by the community, which has a round of some 40 plus organic veg bags being delivered each week to the local area. Around 80% of the veg is grown on site - more during peak season and many of the customers also take eggs with their veg.

We stayed in the yurt while we were there Woofing - a new experience for us and a most magical and enjoyable one. I’ve been inside yurts before and always thought they seem cosy, homely and a nice place to be. This one certainly was, with a woodburner, clear panel in the roof which meant we could lay in bed and star gaze, a full kitchen set up including an oven and a very well stocked food cupboard.

bedtime stories by candlelight

just a gorgeous place to be

Our work including a huge array of different tasks including some planting out of germinated crops, some weeding, some harvesting, some picking, some digging over beds and adding compost and some packing of the veg boxes.

picking salad leaves for veg boxes


the prize marrow - actually a very oversized courgette!

We helped with the chickens - they are cleaned out every single week which was great to see, we have stayed at too many places where animals are not tended to nearly so well. There are three different varieties of hens (and several cocks) there giving a lovely array of dark brown, light brown and blue eggs. While we were there we helped mark some eggs to set under a broody hen for the beginnings of their own flock increase. It was great to be able to actually offer some helpful tips and ideas from our own chicken keeping experiences.

We helped with breadmaking and food preparation generally - at least once a week every one on site eats an evening meal together which was a festive and cheery event we came to look forward to. I baked a cake which went down very well with custard for one of the communal meals.

By far the most exciting part of the work we got involved with was the green building though - something we are really interested in and were thrilled to be able to actually get our hands dirty on. The new house almost at completion in the woods is stunning - a real dream home for those of us with a yen to live in a sustainable, local material built eco house with renewable energy, clever design features, no waste of space or resources and an eye for a simply gorgeous structure with beautiful smooth sweeping lines, pleasing colours and shapes and a truly personal design. We were helping on some repair and maintenance work on the original house which was showing some signs of having been the first crack at green building and needed some attention. This was a straw bale build, covered first with a clay render layer (using the clay dug to make the houses foundations), followed by a cob layer (clay, sand and straw) and finally a lime render layer, which should harden to a stone like texture and simply need a lime wash every year or so afterwards and last a whole lifetime or more. Some cracks and holes had appeared where the straw bales were visible so we were mixing up new clay render from clay we'd dug out and applying that. First the house needed spraying with water and the mix needed making in an old bathtub. We did this job over several days and worked with various members of the community and some visiting helpers too. It was messy, hard physical work and involved spending lots of time up very high ladders but was incredibly interesting, very rewarding and something we are very keen to do more of one day - hopefully on a house we will call our own!

We spent our weekend off exploring nearby Durham which is a very pretty city we'd like to spend more time in at some future point, it's certainly a very lovely part of the country. We were also very pleased to be able to invite some friends to pop in for a meal as they were passing nearby. It was fab to be able to share this amazing host with some friends and show them what we'd been up to.

This was definitely our favourite WWOOF host so far, for all sorts of reasons; the accomodation was so comfortable, well set up and original (I've wanted to sleep in a yurt for ages!), the welcome and set up for WWOOFers was so well organised - we had a WWOOFers book in the yurt telling us everything we could possibly need to know, the emails exchanged with the hosts before we even arrived had been so packed with information and introductions to all the people and how they live there and everyone there was so very warm and friendly. We loved the diversity of the work, the chances to spend time with each of the people there over the course of our stay, the communal meals and the feeling we had really learnt something from our time there but also been able to give something back. For us it really summed up what WWOOFing is all about.

Dragon:
Bad: I feel I should have joined in with the work a bit more (he spent most of his days off exploring and playing with Star and the other children there. He had a ball but on his last day he spent some time chatting with one of the adults and realised how much knowledge and interesting stuff he could also have been doing alongside the playing). I would have liked to do more harvesting and building.
Good: I've learnt that you can live how we want to live. Not too remote and away from "reality" (I think he means conventional society, rather than slipping into a parallel universe!) and luxury and shops. It does exist!
Learnt: About metal work and sharpening stones.

Star:
Bad: The wasps! Dragon and I both got stung quite a few times by the wasps that had a nest near the rope swing we were playing on.
Good: Lots of wildlife here. We've seen rabbits, maybe some hares, herons, rats, dippers, fish in the river and loads of insects.
Learnt: Courgettes left to grow big become marrows. I've also learnt some new varieties of plants - Himylayan balsalm and butterberth.

Ady:
Bad:I struggled without a shower and running water. My issue as I knew there wouldn't be any but it was a downside of this host for me.
Good: The honesty of everything here. The people stay totally true to their beliefs and their lifestyle. They are honest and open about what has been challenging. They are very kind people, both as individuals and as a community. They are an example to living in communities for the way they conduct themselves.
Learnt: Green building. This was a very hands on host for learning about eco building.

Nic:
Bad: I'm really struggling to find a bad other than leaving too soon really! I guess if we had been at this host long term I would have found the lack of washing facilities more challenging, particularly in winter or muddy times. Dragon and Star returned from playing every single time covered in mud and soaking wet which without access to a washing machine would become an issue.
Good: The people! I totally fell in love with the community and felt that I gained so much from spending time there. Each individual was interesting, interested and amazing to spend time with. I was inspired by them all and also felt valued myself for what I could teach them, talk about and offer. This was somewhere my heart and soul felt at home.
Learnt: So much about communal living - the challenges and issues, the highs and the lows, the strengths that each individual has to have and what can really be gained from that lifestyle. I was inspired and in awe of the set up, organisation and logistics of the veg box scheme and the permaculture principles of the lifestyle there. I loved the bit of green building we did and am very keen to learn more about all aspects of that.

When we started our WWOOFing journey I had in my head what hosts might be like, how it would work with us being both helping hands and manpower and contributing fresh ideas, new eyes and the benefits of our own experiences in exchange for hospitality, learning and new skills. For me this host embodied and captured all of those things, inspired me anew for chasing a dream and gave us so much food for thought for our own dreams and lifestyle moving forward. It was a contasting community experience to those we have stayed in before and gave us yet more ideas about how different from the norm enviornments can offer so much.

We are spending this next week with my parents in a holiday cottage in the Lake District. We have completed five months of our adventure and only have one more host left in Zone Two.

Drawing to a close

2011-07-28T22:36:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow is our last 'working' day at our current hosts. As is now my pattern I will update on this host after we leave but unless something totally out of character happens tomorrow it is shaping up to be our favourite host so far. The people are fabulous - inspiring, friendly, lovely, interesting; the scenery is gorgeous, the set up is awe inspiring and it is generally all round fantastic!

We are all four feeling slightly WWOOFed out now. It was said to us by a few people before we set off that moving from host to host every week or two might be a bit of a challenge and indeed it has been - great because we get to fit in as many hosts as possible, interesting for the variety and diversity but hard because it very much characterised this as our Year of Goodbyes - goodbye to friends and family and home before we set out and then goodbye to new friends and hosts along the way as we went. WWOOFing for just a short period often means we are simply not around long enough to be trained to be useful so we end up doing similar tasks each time. Much though we might enjoy being in the sunshine weeding or chopping wood it can be hard to maintain enthusiasm for those types of tasks when you are doing them week in, week out and there is a sense of frustration in not learning any new skills or trying new tasks.

Fortunately this host has been fantastic for renewing our passion, reminding us of what we want from this experience and in teaching us loads of new skills. We have tackled all sorts of new things here and will leave very much educated, informed and armed with new practical abilities. We will also leave with a mere 5 hosts left to go. Although we are only just over half the way through our planned time away we are over 2/3 through our booked hosts. This was accidental in the first place as when booking hosts for zone three it was nearly a year away so it wasn't possible to fill every week. I was quite happy about this as it built flexibility into our plan and allowed space to take time out if we needed it. As it turns out we do feel we need it. We are not exhausted from work but we are ready to chill out, to recouperate as a foursome and take some time just for us. To chat, to laugh and to just be. To discus what happens next, to reflect on what we have learnt, what we still want to learn, where our adventure has taken us so far and what gaps - if any, we have remaining.

We left with so many objectives and goals for this year, so many hopes and dreams, so many expectations and ideas about what it might bring, alongside the practial skills we hoped to learn from WWOOFing we also had a plan for living off the land and seeing more of the UK. As we move ever further northwards that aspect of our plan swings into action and we anticipate dusting off our air gun, digging out our fishing rods and bringing down the spotter books from the shelf in the van as we try our hands at hunting, fishing, foraging, wild camping, wildlife spotting and enjoying the rugged wilder side of our countryside. We have at least a week between every host from now on and intend to spend it living as frugally as possible, getting back in touch with ourselves and nature and working out what happens next.

Briefly Homeless

2011-07-19T23:37:00.000+01:00

See that? Willow - our home, our bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, lounge, our vehicle, our shelter, pretty much our everything in terms of material possessions up there on a ramp about to have all her wheels taken off.

This was where Willow spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday night.

We on the other hand, by virtue of not being allowed to sleep in here there got to stay with our wonderful friends nearby. We had beds, baths, sofas, TV, electricity, we had all our favourite meals, Ady got to hoover and wash up (things he dearly misses!), I got to chat to my friends til the early hours of the morning and sleep in til much later in the morning (a thing I dearly miss) and Dragon and Star got to play with, watch films, connect on DS consoles and generally hang out with their mates (things they dearly miss).

What a wonderful weekend :)

Willow needed attention to her brakes - Ady does the driving (although I really must do some, I hate the idea of not driving at all for a whole year) and was feeling a decline in the brakes and having to press harder and harder on the pedal to get it to stop, particularly disconcerting when in control of a heavy van, loaded with all your possessions and your family hurtling down a hill! So we took her to a garage to have the brakes dealt with and are now £300 the poorer and have brakes that work. Money we can ill afford but can't possibly begrudge and when split over the mileage we have already done in the van is fairly good going per mile I guess!

We were fairly disorganised in decanting Willow into our friends' house and had underestimated how long we would be without her so poor Ady ended up walking miles in the rain carrying bags of clothes, pillows and various other things - he said he felt like he'd just been evicted from home! Fortunately another friend was able to go to his rescue and collect him - have we mentioned before how lucky we are to have such wonderful friends?!

All of us are now fully topped up, restored and in full working order and arrived tonight, slightly delayed at our next hosts, near Durham, up in t'north. We should probably reserve judgement until we've acually done some WWOOFing here but on first impressions as we sit snuggled up cosily inside a gorgeous yurt in flickering candlelight having shared a meal with our hosts, listening to rain pitter patter on the roof and glancing at the stars through the clear roof panel. The yurt seems to be incredibly well set up with everything we could possibly need and we're really excited at the prospect of working with these hosts and learning from them.

New House Organic Farm

2011-07-18T13:09:00.000+01:00

We spent just under a week at New House Organic Farm, near Ashbourne, Derbyshire. It was by far our most challenging host to date, due entirely to a rather unique domestic situation with the hosts who had been a couple but were no longer together and both had their new partners living at the farm too. This made for all sorts of friction, domestic unrest and bad feeling. It was a great shame as the farm is very diverse and there was plenty to learn there. Also Bob, one of the hosts, was incredibly knowledgable and only too happy to tell us and show us things, a great explainer and very passionate about livestock, wildlife and sustainable living.

Unfortunately too much of our time there was clouded by having different people giving us different jobs to do, some of which were clearly not the sort of tasks WWOOFing is about and taught us very little. We struggled to get food each day and instead of the usual arrangement of eating alongside hosts each day we were dished out food to cook ourselves, some of which was simply not acceptable due to being out of date. This was interspersed with sufficient interesting and educational tasks to keep us there and the stunning location in the peak district coupled with lovely weather made up for enough to look on the bright side of the situation. I am writing candidly about our experience as I want to be honest about the challenges WWOOFing can present and as I have name checked all our hosts I am continuing to do so. I think the farm has plenty to offer and in reading the visitors book they have historically been an excellent host so I am sure we were there in a blip in a usually worthwhile place to be. I think they are also rather misrepresented in their listing which mentions alternative energy - a great draw for me - which is infact non-operational currently, and animals, various of which are not being milked or all even on that farmland at the moment.

We did have some great experiences there nonetheless; Dragon and Star loved spending time with the dogs, chickens, ducks and geese, in particular a gosling called Gerald

We did lots of chopping firewood, which both Dragon and Star are getting pretty good at themselves

Other tasks included some crushing and sorting of cans - food and drink tins, fruit picking (mainly gooseberries and blackcurrants), mowing, clearing piles of garden waste and pushing it up hills in wheelbarrows, sweeping, generally tidying and some livestock handling with the cattle. We got involved in ear tagging, weighing, taking temperature, some medication dosing.

For us though I think the most memorable part of the week was the time we spent together in the evenings. We had a campfire every night, which we cooked over (sausages, burgers, chips, egg, bacon and various other dishes over the week) and a bonfire of the heaped up garden waste on our last night, which happened to coincide with the full moon and made for a beautiful evening. We were parked in the dip of a valley and so lost the sun each evening and were thrust into shade before the top of the hill. Three times we ran up the hill at the last minute to watch the sun dip behind the peaks - very gorgeous and a just reward for the run!

We had lots of time to chat between the four of us and have been really starting to hone our plans about what we do next. We are conscious of being half way though our planned hosts (we had nine months worth of booked places before we left) and with every new host we find new things to bat about as ideas, to discuss as possibilities for us or to write off as definitely not for us. New House Farm was no different and we came away with plenty to talk about and ponder on.

Dragon:
Bad: There was a lot of confusion about the food.
Good: It was good fun cooking dinner over the fire every night.
Learnt: All the different types of beer and cider tins. I didn't know that different types of drinks cans are made of different things.

Star:
Bad: The dogs chased the gosling (there were several terriers at the farm) and that made me scared it would get hurt. We were not part of the family at all like we have been at every other WWOOFing host.
Good: I really liked the gosling at the farm, he was very cute.
Learnt: If you tame a boy gosling when it grows into a gander it can turn on you.

Ady:
Bad: The tension at the farm. A lot of the jobs we were given were menial tasks which didn't really represent the work that WWOOFing is supposed to be about.
Good: Bob was a great teacher and his devotion and dedication to giving us his time, sitting down and talking to us and going through things in great detail with us made him probably our best host so far. The animal welfare at the farm was exceptionally good, Bob knew each of his animals individually and really cared about them. It was another host that were very passionate about recycling their waste. The evenings spent with my family were brilliant. The weather was a huge factor in this as it was lovely every day but sitting round a fire in beautiful surroundings was a real highlight of the year so far.
Learnt: A lot about the paperwork and financial side of farming and agriculture. Bob taught us about grants and funding for various types of land which was fascinating and will certainly feature in our future plans. He also taught us about organic status. At the neighbouring farm we visited we learnt that our dreams of an educational facility for learning about farming, animals and agriculture is a realistic possibility.

Nic:
Bad: The domestic unrest within the resident of the farm. WWOOFing does create a false and imediate intimacy as you live within a family as WWOOFers. This can be challenging even when the host family are lovely and welcomming. This particular host had so many issues around the relationships and family dynamics that they really should not have been inviting strangers and other people into the already complicated mix. A basic criteria of WWOOFing is that food is provided and this was sometimes a challenge to find and I felt many of the tasks we were given were not related to 'working on organic farms'.
Good: Hands on working with the cattle - we did herding and driving the cows several times, dealt with some fiesty cattle and a bull and were given loads of practical hints and experience in that, we weighed cattle, took their temperature, ear tagged them, aided in medicating them (orally and injected) and had more contact with them than at any other host so far. The time Bob spent with us teaching us about paperwork and funding will prove invaluable in the future and Bob invited us to remain in contact for further help. The evenings were a real highlight and really gave us a feel of one of the reasons we had come WWOOFing.
Learnt: Gas cutting, cattle handling, host management!!! about grants and funding.

Anti-WWWOOFing

2011-07-11T01:11:00.000+01:00

At pretty much every single one of our WWOOFing hosts I think it is fair to say that hosts have become friends. This last week the opposite has been true and friends have become hosts!

After a fairly intense first half of our planned adventures (we have booked nine months worth of hosts, we are now four and a half months in) with no real time off to speak of we were all feeling ready for a proper break. We have had days off and the odd restful period here and there but not a genuine break with no work or expectations since we set off. We were due to WWOOF at a community in South Wales which did look great and I am sure would have been another good experience and chance to meet yet more interesting people but it was 100 miles plus in the wrong direction to the host we are now at in Derbyshire so we decided to take a week off, invest the petrol costs saved in food and a campsite and contacted friends to arrange meeting up.

So Saturday last week saw us heading to Cheshire, an area we lived in for several years when Dragon and Star were really small and the home of our dear friends Lynda and Stuart. We have stayed with them several times before and they have always been notable for an amazing level of hospitality but I think they surpassed their own very high standard this time. And of course we were oh-so ready for a bit of home comfort!

We were greeted with glasses of wine and beer for Ady and I, the delicious scent of chicken and sausages (MEAT!) wafting out of their kitchen, the sun shining on their patio, jelly and trifle for pudding, a bath and real beds. If we'd compiled a list of all the things we were missing and handed it to them I don't think they could have done a better job of ticking them off!

We enjoyed Lynda and Stuart's company so much and are so very grateful for how well looked after they made us feel. Knowing we have their love, support, faith in us and championing of our adventure means more to us than I can ever express. So Lynda, these ones are for you.

with Snowdonia in the background

on Bangor Pier

at our hosts in Bangor


in Montgomery

Our week off was sandwiched in the middle with my fabulous friend Jay and her very cool son L meeting us at Manchester Museum of Science and Industry. It was great to catch up with them and their news, spend some time chatting together in the sunshine outside the museum and enjoy playing with some of the interactive exhibits. Jay treated us all to coffee and cake and then very generously bought Dragon and Star each a momento of the day in the museum giftshop, which as close as you can get to hospitality without us actually being in her home!

We also enjoyed browing charity shops and Star and I had a lovely couple of hours just the two of us which inlcuded a trip to a cafe for hot chocolate

Our second half of the week was back in Willow again, but this time for some recreational camping rather than day to day living. We managed to gatecrash a meeting of a group of friends celebrating one of Dragon's best friend's birthday. We had a fabulous three nights with three other families with the children all roaming, making dens, building camps, whittling wood, building campfires, flint knapping, sharing skills, cooperating and working together, creating a show to entertain the adults and being Proper Children, while us adults did plenty of cooking outside communally, drinking tea, cider, mulled wine (camping essential!), chatting, laughing, sharing in jokes and making memories.

What a fantastic week we have had, sunshine, laughter, great food and drink, rest and relaxation but more than that, the greatest gift of all, the love and company of some of our wonderful friends.

All about the people

2011-07-03T23:44:00.000+01:00

One of the things I was most excited about on our adventure was the opportunity to meet so many people, subscribing as I do to the idea that strangers are just friends we haven't met yet. Along with the hosts, who have been so generous, welcoming us into their homes, their families and their lives we have also encountered all sorts of other new friends along the way.

We have WWOOFed alongside other people, from all sorts of backgrounds, coming to WWOOFing for all sorts of diverse reasons, all ages, nationalities and types of people. We have met the hosts friends, families and neighbours. As a result of bumping into people we have already deviated from our planned route and found ourselves 'WWOOFing' for people who aren't even WWOOF hosts! Our motto is gradually becomming 'take every opportunity that arises as and when it comes up!' As a result we have met some amazing people and had some fantastic experiences. Spending time with Jill from Middlewick (twice!) was as a result of getting chatting to her at a pizza evening she hosted for her neighbours, which we went along to with our WWOOF hosts at the time. We feel very lucky to consider Jill as a close friend now and keep regularly in touch.

At our last hosts the next door neighbour was Ian Sturrock, the apple tree man. Ian picked us up one afternoon as we were walking along the lane back to our hosts, let Dragon and Star do some pond dipping in his pond and invited us back the following day for a tour of his apple tree operation. We learnt about sexual reproduction and vegetative reproduction on apples, grafting and root stock, using chemicals or not, pruning, apple tree shapes and sizes and Welsh apple varieties that had almost died out. We tore ourselves away really as spending time with Ian was entertaining, informative and a lot of fun. He invited us to stay any time and we really hope to take him up on that and return some time.

On our last evening at our hosts they very kindly took us out for a meal at a local restaurant where a friend of theirs was singing. We were briefly introduced before he took the stage and were instantly entranced by both his clear and pure voice and his fantastic songs with a strong message of sustainable living approaches. After about half an hour I leant across to our host to ask the name of the singer so I could look up his songs and get hold of copies and did a double take when I got the reply 'Eric Maddern'. Eric Maddern! Only one of Dragon, Star and I's favourite authors! We first discovered his books when Dragon was about four or five and started asking questions about where humans came from, why some of us were different colours to each other and how the world began. It seemed that Eric had a book to answer pretty much every question in beautiful poetic words, stunningly illustrated. Books to treasure, to bring out by the pile and snuggle up and share together over and over again.

We all really enjoyed the songs and spent some time chatting to Eric after his performance, thanked him for his stories which we have all gotten so much pleasure from and were invited to visit him at his home and eco-retreat the following day. What an amazing place it is too. Cae Mabon (I really recommend having a good look at the website, particularly the pictures, which do some justice to how beautiful it is there). We sat and chatted to Eric in the sunshine, added to our collection of his books with a couple of signed copies which have instantly become treasured items with a space found for them in the van, had a tour of the woodland, river, amazing eco buildings, gardens, ducks and wonderful space there. We really hope we will return there at some point and have promised to stay in touch with Eric who is interested in our adventure.

Who knows who we'll meet next, which way our adventure will lead? Staying open minded to suggestions, invitations and opportunities, saying yes to offers, taking chances and going with the flow. We're going to keep smiling at those strangers and saying 'hello' and sticking our hands out to introduce ourselves - every single one of them could turn out to be our new best friend.

Pen Y Bonc

2011-07-03T19:23:00.000+01:00

We finished yesterday at Pen Y Bonc, a half a hectare smallholding near Bangor, North Wales. They have a fantastic website at Busy Bees where you can read about them in their own words.

We spent a very lovely two weeks with Jonathan and Lisa learning all sorts of things from them. They have chickens and ducks, a large pond teeming with wildlife, areas of their land given over to nature, many beehives, a huge polytunnel, a small orchard and many raised beds. They are close to self sufficient in their fruit and veg growing, obviously we were there at the right time to be eating many things freshly picked from the garden but throughout the year they eat frozen, pickled, preserved food grown themselves too.

Our tasks included: helping with the bees (we assisted in moving a colony from one hive to another ready to be passed on to a new beekeeper), bottling honey, bottling wine (mead, made with honey), picking off dried herbs and jarring them, picking soft fruits (strawberries, raspberries, tayberries, loganberries, red, black and white currants, gooseberries, jostaberries, loganberries), salad leaves, thinning carrots, grapes and apples, sowing seeds, transplanting seedlings, weeding, strimming, mowing, mulching, feeding and watering plants (including a diluted wee feed and a diluted seaweed extract foliage feed), treating the ends of some wood for use in building, harvesting garlic and onions and a bit of building work. Some helping to keep the ducks in the area they were supposed to be a mucking out their house and the chicken shed, collecting eggs and feeding the birds, setting a squirrel trap and a bit of moving firewood about. All hugely diverse and very educational.

It was a very enjoyable WWOOF experience, Lisa and Jonathan are interesting, inspirational people only too happy to share their knowledge and skills and everything we did was fully explained and had an obvious reasoning and purpose. We really enjoyed spending time with them and their children and the little community of their friends and neighbours around them. Our days off were spent walking into the local town, driving a short way to enjoy Anglesey and we loved spreading ourselves out of an evening and making use of the static that they had as WWOOFers accomodation.

pruning and thinning grapes

bottling honey

mmmm honey

I put that in there (with a little help from those bees!)

grading and trimming carrots

checking apple tree grafts

corking the mead

treating the cordwood

digging up the garlic

elephant garlic!

blackcurrant harvesting


onion harvesting

Dragon:
Bad: The hosts were vegetarian and I really missed eating meat while we were there. It did make me realise that meat is a luxury food though. We used to eat meat most days at home so not having it at all was hard.
Good: I enjoyed the time we spent doing beekeeping stuff. I got to have a go with the smoker which was fun, it worked differently to how I expected it to.
Learnt: About bees, about winemaking (sterilising and corking the bottles).

Star:
Bad: I found the beekeeping suit really uncomfortable. Daddy had zipped my hair into the velcro which pulled and I really needed to blow my nose!
Good: I liked the ducks and the chickens and that I got to do lots with them.
Learnt: About bottling honey, we used a special container with a tap to fill the jars and had to skim stuff off the top and bottom of the honey.

Ady:
Bad: The return to suburbia! Despite having land and beautiful views there was traffic noise, helicopters overhead landing at the nearby hospital and a huge retail park very close by. There was loads of light pollution too.
Good: The innovation behind the planning of their land. Everything was well organised, the hosts were very close to self sufficient with their fruit and veg growing on a really small space. Every area was being used for something whether it was growing food or given to wildlife. It was a very efficient operation.
Learnt: About thinning fruit; apples, grapes and carrots. The irrigation system and use of the polytunnel.

Nic:
Bad: Hogweed! Ady and I both have scarred arms and chests from strimming the hogweed. We had no idea it was dangerous but a combination of the sunshine, damp skin and the sap caused phytophotodermatitis. This caused itchy red spots, which blistered and have scarred. I’m hoping the scars will heal or fade.
Good: Pen Y Bonc was a great place for seeing a less extreme version of the lifestyles we have previously experienced. They are not off grid but do use a green energy provider for their mains electricity, they are using mains water but conserve water where possible and work with nature and the elements as much as they can to have as light an impact as possible. It was heartening to see that on a relatively small plot of land, in a pretty urban area it is feasible to lead the lifestyle we hanker after.
Learnt: A great taster in beekeeping - still loads to learn and I’d like to be around for some of the ‘other end’ stuff like honey extraction. I learnt lots from Lisa’s very organised approach to planning her entire calendar of events; sowing, transplanting, harvesting, feeding, mulching and thinning, crop rotation, companion planting and more.

This post is brought to you by a Mifi, from Three.

Finished working, not finished at host

2011-07-01T00:53:00.000+01:00

We're in the rather curious position of having finished our actual WWOOFing duties before the end of our stay at our current host. Our hosts have a course to attend somewhere tomorrow so won't be around and as it was to be our last day with them working anyway they have told us to take the day off!

We're heading to stay with friends for a few nights and then more friends for a few more nights next week and very much looking forward to a bit of downtime. We've been on the road now for four months and last weekend reminded us that we had a side agenda of time off together, enjoying the fact we don't have high pressure jobs with long hours and that we should be making the most of this period of freedom. Ady and I both feel we have learnt so much already, really cemented what we would like to do next and as such are looking forward to easing off the pressure to fill the odd few empty weeks we have in the diary over the coming months with hosts, thinking it would be far more fun to execise some of the lessons we have learnt in living as cheaply as possible and maybe trying our hands at some hunting, fishing, foraging or other 'freegan' type activities.

We've had some interesting conversations about how our lives have changed so far and how they are different to how we lived before and also how we have changed and what long lasting impact we imagine this experience will have on us going forward with some very interesting and insightful responses from Dragon and Star. I have got some of that saved in a draft post which I will publish when we've all finished adding to it.

Wherever we wander, wherever we roam

2011-06-27T00:18:00.000+01:00

There are just so many objectives to this year that I could probably have a blog for each one, why we want to achieve them and whether we manage it. As in so many areas of life the chances are that the objectives and reasons change along the way anyway and some of the early ideas get lost in the mists of time.

But certainly a side objective of the adventure was to see more of our beautiful country. I love the UK; I love the climate, the culture, the history. I love the diverse people, towns and cities and countryside. I love the regional accents and local phrases and customs. I adore the fact that within just a few hundred miles the scenery changes, the weather changes, the wildlife changes. There is no one particular county that I consider home really, I have roots in Sussex, in North Wales, in Manchester and friends scattered all over the UK. One of the things we quite liked the idea of was living in various parts of the country and seeing where best fitted us this year with a view to deciding where to eventually settle.

On our days off at each host we have tried to get a taste of the areas we are in. Not by visiting the local expensive tourist attractions but by spending time hanging out, chatting to locals, visiting free places of interest, going on walks, sometimes using public transport. I want Dragon and Star to have a really good understanding of our country, the geography of it and be able to hear a place name and have memories attached to it if we've been there - to have eaten a cream tea in Devon, paddled in the Chalice water in Glastonbury, seen the Menai bridge in the shadow of Snowdon, stood on the platform at Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch station, know that there is a sign on the M62 declaring it the highest point of a motorway in the UK, stood on coasts on the south, east, west and north of our island and crossed off every single possible bird, animal and sea creature they could have seen in their spotter books. I hope this little taster of travelling, of broadening horizons and opening their eyes to what an amazing planet we live in gives them a thirst for wandering which leads them far and wide across the globe, fires their curiosity about their world and gives them confidence to ask questions, look for answers, find out all there is to know about people and places.

So this weekend we have been off exploring. Yesterday we walked into Bangor (city made famous by that Fiddlers Dram song from 1980!) for a good old forage round the charity shops. Bangor has no shortage of them, the massive retail park all along the main road in has made sure the actual city centre is full of charity shops and mobile phone stores. It was about 4 miles in, which meant with walking around all day and the walk back again we must have done a good 10 miles, accounting for our aching feet by the time we got back at about 730pm. We also had aching arms as we made a few purchases which we had to carry back. I got a pair of bib and braces work overalls from the army surplus shop, Ady got a rain coat from there too. Dragon got a new pad and some pens having used up all the pads we left home with - he has been creating stories about pirates, illustrations mostly with a few words and this rapidly filled the 3 sketch pads he brought with us. Star found a DS game she'd been after for a while second hand in a game shop and we bought some replacement storage boxes for our clothes cupboard as the stacking crates we had been using had proved not robust enough for the pressure of being hauled in and out of the cupboard every day and crammed with clothes.

Today we drove Willow across the bridge to the Isle of Anglesey. Ady and I had been before, several times in years gone by but I wanted to show Dragon and Star some of the sights. We started by going right to the tip to the island to visit the RSPB reserve of South Stack Cliffs. We had a bracing walk along the cliffs in the very sunny and warm but blustery and windy weather, stopped to chat to a very enthusiastic and informative ranger in the Ellis tower who pointed out various birds and talked to us about the habitat, why it was so diverse and unique and how important it was to preserve it. Then we walked down the winding steps and joined many other people hanging over the egde with binoculars trained on the thousands of sea birds on the cliff faces. There were guillemots, shearwaters, choughs and the occassional puffin - the real prize to spot! After a few minutes gazing I found three (identifiable by their orange legs and colourful beaks) and then had a little crowd gathered around as I tried to describe where they were so everyone could train their binoculars and spot them too. Ady spotted them and the kids and I wandered further down the cliff path and found a great spot where the rocks parted to create a natural seat. Both the kids then managed to see puffins with the binoculars too so that was a real highlight.

We then drove back to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch and stood on the train station platform to get the classic photo, before driving to a layby overlooking the Menai Bridge, pulling over to take some photos and make a cup of tea in Willow. Dragon was particularly enchanted with this, even more so when he needed a wee and was able to nip back in the van to use the loo and still have his view of the bridge at the same time! We looked at Snowdon in the background and talked about the height of the summit and discussed how many Star's tall it is!

We drove over the bridge and back - breathing in as it was very tight for Willow - before driving back over the Britannia bridge again.

So, some landmarks, some natural wonders, some wildlife and some celebrated feats of engineering. A great mix of the stuff that humans do well and the stuff we can take no credit for at all. Dragon and Star will definitely remember this corner of North Wales.

Taking Requests

2011-06-24T22:53:00.000+01:00

A few people have mentioned they like seeing pictures on the blog, so always happy to show off the gorgeous Dragon and Star (and chuck in a few of Ady and I for good measure) here are a few from the last couple of weeks.

Last week we were thrilled to have a visit from my parents, who we're missing despite regular phonecalls. We were in North Wales which is where Dad grew up so it was great to visit some of his childhood landmarks. We stayed in a campsite while Mum & Dad had a room in a hotel.

Dragon and Star paddling in the stream at the campsite

The village my Dad grew up in. It now has a sign telling the history of the village along with photographs.

including this one of his grandad, my great-grandad, Dragon & Star's great-great-grandad!

Standing outside the school house Grandad went to nearly 70 years ago, with his grandchildren who don't go to school - there's progress!

we have pictures through years and years of various family standing on this bridge. The house in the foreground is where Dad lived as a boy. His initials are carved into the bridge somewhere, this time we didn't manage to find them.

A picture kindly taken by a fellow drinker in the pub one evening. We were playing silly songs on the juke box and having a great time.

another venue we have many pictures of us at through the ages - standing on the roadside at the Horseshoe Pass, North Wales. I wonder if Dragon and Star will continue to add to the library of these location pictures...

This week we are at a host in North Wales and enjoying a great mix of tasks including picking fruits - here we are with a haul of blackcurrants

Beekeeping - our hosts keep bees and also run courses in beekeeping. We were lucky enough to have a guided tour of their hives and Dragon and Star got to be chief smoker-operators

Star looking like an astronaut in her beekeeping suit

smokin'

Crazy-versary

2011-06-22T23:02:00.000+01:00

I've just walked to the supermarket on my own (for loo roll! My life is *that* glamourous!) and so had about 90 minutes private headspace which I spent mostly realising what a HUGE adventure we are having and what a BIG deal it is.

I also realised that if it was 8 months in the planning and we are 4 months in then it must be around a year since we started embarking on our adventure. Sure enough I have been checking back in my diary and the first mention of the whole idea is a year ago today on 22 June 2010. Which makes this our Crazyversary :)

A huge part of this whole endeavour was in the planning - the arranging hosts, plotting a route, finding a campervan, selling stuff to raise money, leaving our jobs, finding tenants for our house, telling family and friends, packing up our lives, working out what to take and what to leave behind.

Another huge part of the adventure will be what happens next - do we return to our 'normal' lives? Do we go round again? Do we head to a different country? Do we sell up and try our hand at the dream life so many of our hosts are living? We have some ideas already but as these are ever shifting and altering I'll leave sharing those for another day. Suffice to say our initial wish lists are forever having things scribbled out and yet more things added to the bottom.

And of course the main part of the Wondering Wanderers is the right here, right now. The actual doing it. The travelling around the country, living with new people every week or two, learning, learning all the time. Learning about self sufficiency, about growing, about harvesting, about preserving and bottling and pickling, about breadmaking, learning about animal rearing, killing and processing, learning about alternative technology, being green, being eco-friendly, permaculture, mend and make do. Learning about living with less, consuming and spending less, having less, needing less, wanting less. Learning about survival, about making do with what we have, about how very priviledged our lives are even when we think we are in challenging places. Learning about ourselves, our relationships with each other and the world around us, learning about what we want out of live, what is important to us, what we really believe in, what we care about enough to sacrifice and compromise and what we truly hold dear enough to hold on to.

We are currently in North Wales at a host who do loads of growing fruit and veg, keep chickens and ducks. We have been sowing and harvesting, collecting eggs, weeding, mowing, doing some beekeeping, preserving and thining and pruning. Dragon and Star are learning alongside us, we are spending the evenings in a static the hosts have as WWOOFers accomodation (although we are still sleeping in Willlow) so are getting to spread out a bit, sit on sofas, enjoy hanging out and just remember what evenings are again.

So Happy Crazyversary to us, thanks to all those following our wanderings and wonderings, we'll raise a virtual glass to you for walking alongside us as we celebrate a full year since this mad idea first made it into our consciousness and wonder where our wanderings will find us this time next year.

Bryn Mawr

2011-06-20T23:20:00.000+01:00

It all went rather quiet didn't it?

A fair representation of our experience too really - we spent just over two weeks at our most extreme and remote WWOOFing hosts yet. A 77 acre hillside farm, in conversion to organic, almost totally self sufficient in fruit and vegetables, meat, poultry and eggs nestled in an isolated area about 20 miles from Welshpool in Wales.

Our hosts were Anna and Alan, a couple with 3 Home Educated boys aged 11, 8 and 5 and Alan's sister Abi and her (schooled) 14 year old daughter. Alan, Anna and boys lived between a tent and several caravans while Abi and her daughter had a static. Food, tea breaks and general hanging out happened in a converted animal barn kitted out with table and chairs, wood burning stove, electric cooker, sink etc. A collection of out buildings housed the firewood, Alan's wood and metal working tools, a selection of chest freezers - some plugged in to keep food frozen, some just used as airtight, pest proof storage space, pig feed, a sofa and TV with dvd player and video. Toilet facilities are three compost loos - two for poo and one for wee. There is a bath but not plumbed in although an old water tank, filled by rainwater and heated by a log burner underneath is used for a hot tub - not operational while we were there but a fabulous idea under the stars. Showers could be taken using a hose pipe after a long hot day of the water in the hose being warmed, or in the rather more luxurious location of Abi's static!

Much of the 77 acres is unused other than for wildlife or with young trees planted for future woodlands. Some of the land is used for grazing their small herd of highland cattle or rented to a neighbouring farmer for grazing his sheep. Pigs are in three sectioned off areas on the land, as are chickens, ducks and geese on others. There are three main cultivated growing areas, planted into beds with crop rotation programmes set up. A very young orchard is in place along with other fruit and nut trees.

A strong thread of permaculture principles runs through Bryn Mawr with nothing wasted and the most made of natural resources and working with what they have got. Grass cut is used for mulch or compost, suppressing weeds and creating feed for plants. Alan has plans for a cut grass compost water heating system at some future point. Weeds are pig feed, stones collected from rotovated beds are put to one side for use in building or hole filling / ground levelling.

Alan is a very talented and knowledgable man with huge amounts to share and teach and we learnt loads from him about alternative technologies, eco-building ideas, green energy and more. He also was our saviour when Willow had various ailments which would have prevented us travelling much further and helped us out with arranging for a damaged water pump to be reconditioned, replacing our broken fan with a new one from a car he had for spares and various other things. She is now running really well and we are so very grateful to have been able to have her fixed up and show our appreciation with a few tokens in exchange for all Alan did for us.

Anna was an inspirational person to spend time with, particularly for me. I learnt so much from her about growing, harvesting, preserving and breadmaking. She taught me a tiny fraction of what she knows about herbs and plants and some of the uses for them in medicine. She coached me through all aspects of carving a spoon from wood selection and first shaping with a carving axe to using the saw horse and draw knife, hammer and carving chisel. We talked about education, parenting, community living, alternative lifestyles, being off grid and loads more. I felt I could have spent years in Anna's company and still learnt from her every day.

Abi worked full time so was not around all that much but as an education officer for the local wildlife trust she was a mine of information about various wildlife and regularly joined us in the evenings to share what she had been up to that day. We were fortunate to be around to share Abi's birthday with her too, coming together for a big evening meal and jelly, ice cream and birthday cake eating.

We were joined by another WWOOFer for most of our stay at Bryn Mawr which is always interesting. Meeting someone else doing the same as us but for very different reasons and with very different expectations. We crossed paths with several WWOOFers at a couple of our early hosts but had not worked alongside someone else for a while so that was good to do again. Knowing how much our adventure has already changed our outlook and approach to live means it will be interesting to meet our felllow WWOOFer this time again in the future and see whether further into his journey he has changed or altered at all as this was his very first host.

Our tasks over the two weeks included; weeding, mulching, gathering cut grass, helping to load the trailer with sawn wood, chopping firewood, sowing some seeds, tilling and farrowing, gathering stones, feeding the pigs and chickens, putting up an enormous compost bin and loads more. As ever what we learnt in our daily working was easily matched by what we learnt by simply living alongside our hosts, learning from them and talking to them about their lives.

The challenges, as ever, were present - this was an extreme off grid lifestyle with an hour or so per day of a diesel generator being run which meant we were able to charge things up while our hosts powered their electric oven for bread baking, washing machines to clean clothes, charge up their batteries to run lights and the TV for the kids, power the freezers sufficiently to ensure food remained frozen and for Alan to run his welder or other tools to build woodburning stoves which he makes to sell. We had virtually no moile phone or internet signal so I had to walk up the hill once a day to check for any urgent voicemail messages to my phone to make sure we were not totally cut off from the outside world.

Dragon:
Bad: I found it difficult to share Daddy with other children that I didn't have much in common with.
Good: I tried lots of new foods and some I really enjoyed.
Learnt: More about being off grid and how to make most use of limited electricity and really value it.

Ady:
Bad: The remoteness of the location. I like to feel some sort of civilisation, shop or similar is accessible by walking. At this host there was nothing within walking distance at all.
Good: The remoteness of the location! Conversely it was also lovely to be so isolated and feel really 'away from it all'
Learnt: How important south facing aspect is for land you are growing on.

Star:
Bad: I was sad when ducklings died (about four were lost over a few days) and the cats caught lots of voles and mice which I felt sad about but Mummy and I talked about the voles and mice being hunted and food chains.
Good: I liked there being lots of animals - cats, dogs, pigs, chickens, cows, ducks, geese.
Learnt: About grafting trees, how to do it and why.

Nic:
Bad: This was a challenging place to be for lots of reasons. Being so remote was tough, being so remote with Willow out of action was even tougher as we have always consoled ourselves that we can drive away from a host at any time if we have had enough - being 17 miles from the nearest town with no mode of transport was enough to have me feeling twitchy about being 'trapped'. The lack of communication with the outside world - very patchy mobile / internet connection also had me feeling uneasy as I constantly fretted about emergencies happening to friends or family and us not knowing. I guess I came to realise my reliance on some sort of community - either local or virtual and how at sea I felt without that safety net within easy reach. There were aspects of our experience here which threw into sharp relief some of the less easy aspects of the relationships between the four of us, so much talking things over, accepting each other and giving credability to how the other person was feeling even if we were unable to empathise was in order, which is testing, even if ultimately healthy.
Good: I loved spending time with Anna, I found her interesting, inspiring and with so much knowledge to share. I felt like I learnt so much at this host and I cannot possibly imagine a better or more extreme example of the 'ultimate' in the off-grid, self sufficient, alternative technology lifestyle. Having these sorts of experiences gives us so much to draw upon in creating our own wishlist for the future and helping us realise what we are and are not prepared to give up / compromise / not have in our lives.
Learnt: so, so, so much! About mulching, breadmaking and preserving, clever use of land and resources to make the most of limited energy, reusing almost everything. I learnt the basics of spoon carving, how to identify various wild foods, some new ideas for food and ways to cook things, massive sparks of ideas for green building, alternative energy, growing foods and more.

Back on the grid

2011-06-16T11:32:00.000+01:00

A very quick update to say we have been totally off grid without electric, mobile phone signal or internet connection for just over two weeks, on a remote hillside in North Wales.

A very interesting experience with loads to report back on when I have time over the next couple of days.

We're currently having a few days off and are in a campsite at the foot of the Horseshoe Pass in LLangollen which is an area close to our hearts for lots of reasons. Mobile phone and mobile internet signals are good, we have electric hook up and this afternoon my parents are joining us for a few days.

Thank you for all the texts, comments and emails checking we are okay, we are all fine, if slightly reeling from such an extreme and intense couple of weeks, which I look forward to sharing on here very soon.

A rest is as good as a change

2011-05-26T00:41:00.000+01:00

We're three months in. We've completed Zone One. We've done give or take 1000 miles. We've completed the first leg of our adventure and ticked many things off our lists already.

We've lived in a tent for two weeks in temperatures below freezing; spent four consecutive weeks sleeping in the van, we've eaten vegan, vegetarian diets including lentils. We've dealt with vomiting, diarrhoea, menstruation, allergic reactions requiring prescription treatment. We have milked cows, been to a slaughterhouse, sheared sheep, driven tractors. We have laughed, cried, faced fears, made friends, talked to strangers, worked crazy long hours, dug ditches, shovelled shit, clipped hooves, chopped wood, lived off grid, sat around too many different kitchen tables to count.

Built into our year are odd weeks here and there to rest, recuperate, regroup, stop, breathe, sleep! This was our first one. We are not without tasks as we are holiday cottage sitting for a friend and doing some weeding and general garden tidying and ensuring the cottage is guest-ready for the next visitors after we leave but it has been just blissful to go to bed when we want, get up when we want, eat and drink and sit around. We have read, watched some TV, played cards, done jigsaw puzzles, gone for walks, chatted, baked bread and just generally enjoyed some down time. This weekend we are meeting up with a large group of very close friends which we are all very much looking forward to. It's a perfect marker to the end of this first part of the adventure.

Willow

2011-05-25T00:21:00.000+01:00

We've done close to 1000 miles since we left home 3 months ago, some short and some long journey along the way.

We've slept in Willow for about two thirds of the time and cooked and properly lived in her for several weeks, sometimes plugged in to hook up electricity, sometimes 'off grid'.

Internally she is showing some signs off wear and tear from this level of use now. Little things, which can be repaired or replaced but are giving her a slightly tatty and lived in feel; stuff like edging strips coming off the worktops, the material on the seat wearing and fraying and some of the curtains missing hooks. We are all conscious of looking after her but it's a pretty small space for four people to live in so it was inevitable that we would have an impact on the rather pristine condition she was in when we started out.

Mechanically we have had some iffy moments. We knew she dropped oil but some sealant seems to have fixed that. She is however dropping automatic transmission fluid at a rather scary rate. We did call out a mobile mechanic at one of the hosts we were at as she was really struggling with hills and seemed to not be changing gears properly (Willow is an automatic but you can hear the gear changes when they happen). He checked the ATF and it was all but empty so he filled that up and just charged us for the oil. We were quite happy to be patronised by a mechanic thinking we were idiots for £30 and a fixed van!

She has been playing up again though and although we keep topping it up it keeps coming back out so we have been debating some sort of action plan. We do have breakdown cover so will not find ourselves in trouble in an emergency situation but we don't have huge funds for repair work and so are debating the pros and cons of just spending a fiver every hundred miles or so to top the fluid up or getting it looked at properly. Today we got some stuff which claims to seal holes so we will give that a go and try and press on. I remain hopeful that at some point along our journey we may well find someone who is knowledgable enough about engines to help us out with it in exchange for some work or help and feel that part of this adventure is seeing whether Willow can do it against all odds.

We also have a second issue of the fan not working. It is a design that works in some sort of oil filled manner and it is broken. The mechanic we called out confirmed this and said we'd need to get one from a scrapyard and could probably fit it ourselves. It means that on a normal run it is fine because the air flowing as we drive along keeps it all cool but if we hit traffic or a hill which she needs to take slowly the engine starts to overheat, so we are getting through quite a bit of coolant / anti freeze too. Again I suspect calling in the proper people to do the job (whatever the mechanic might think I suspect the changing of a fan is beyond us without supervision) may well cost more than Willow is worth and will inevitably leave us homeless for at least one night so I am keeping my fingers crossed we end up somewhere with a broken down vehicle with a compatible fan kicking about that we are able to buy cheaply or swap something for.

For me this all adds to the drama and adventure of our year, for Ady it is often the cause of sleepless nights but I figure if one of us is fretting and convinced it will go wrong any moment while the other one is airy and nochalent and remains sure it will all work out okay in the end at least one of us will be right. If it's Ady he gets the satisfaction of 'I told you so' and I get to shrug and be in charge of working out what we do next. If I'm right we all win as it's the best result.

Place your bets!

Little Coombe / Hallr Wood

2011-05-24T17:17:00.000+01:00

We've finished Zone One with a week in Somerset shared between two hosts. This was somewhere we were supposed to have stayed earlier but had been put off by the host as they were unwell when we were due to be with them. They had asked us to stay in touch and reschedule if possible and when we had an empty week in the vicinity we got in touch and arranged it.

We were staying parked in the Caravan Club listed campsite within the land of Rob & Jane and our week was split between Rob and Jane; doing a variety of tasks on their land and Peter, who I had actually made contact with first working in his field and woodland. We slept in Willow, breakfasted in there from food given to us by our hosts and then had lunch and dinner with whichever host we had been working with that day.

We arrived on Monday and after parking up and having a brief tour around some of the smallholding at Rob & Jane's we set to work moving some firewood, grading it for various different piles and stacking it up ready to season for next winter. There is a real art to creating a decent woodpile; one that will not rot away or cause damp problems for a wall it may be stacked next to, fall down or be unstable - Dragon likened it to playing Jenga and I think he is pretty close; except with far less regularly shaped pieces!

Tuesday I have previously blogged complete with photos and was a day spent with Peter.

On Wednesday we were back with Rob and Jane and spent time having a really good tour of all their land. More firewood moving and some pulling weeds and clearing an area that had had some hedge laying done in the past but had grown over.

Thursday we had a day off and spent it trawling charity shops for some replacement jeans for those of us who have gone down a size or up a size in three months! After messing about with various footwear options for me I finally decided I need some proper workboots with steel toecaps so that I can be confident of safety, waterproofness and so on. I've been looking in charity shops everywhere we have been and not come across any so I decided to invest in a new pair. We were near one of those horrible outlet village shopping centres so we ventured in far enough to visit the Dickies outlet store and pick up a pair of very heavily discounted boots for me (well under half the website price) . They have already been very comprehensively tested with Dragon and Star both standing on my feet to check they work! In the evening we headed over to Middlewick for a very nice evening with Jill as we'd not managed a proper goodbye when we left to move on earlier in the week.

Friday we were with Peter again and did some putting down plastic and carpet to suppress weeds and warm the ground up ready for autumn planting in a couple of hours, harvested some comfrey, checked on the trees we'd planted and mulched earlier in the week and had the tough task of drinking a whole bottle of fizzy drink between us so we could use the plastic bottle to make some sapling protectors.

On Saturday Dragon and Star painted some bituminous paint on the ends of some posts and we spent some time in the orchard grading and stacking and splitting more firewood. In the afternoon we went along with Rob to a local jumble sale and picked up huge bargains of jeans and jumpers all round along with some books and a couple of toys for Dragon and Star all for about 20p each.

Sunday morning was more time in the orchard clearing nettles, time in the chicken house clearing nettles, time in the hedge clearing dead wood and some time spent watching two sheep being sheared and having a little go ourselves.

In the evening we all had a big group dinner with Jane, Rob, their two teenagers who live at home (a third is off at uni) and Jane's parents which was very jolly and felt rather like Christmas all sat at a long table. We had lots of compliments about Dragon and Star which was lovely, lots of enthusiasm for our long term plans and offers to return again for another stint, which if we end up going round again is something we may well take them up on.

Nic:
Bad: It was frustrating to realise very close to the end of the week just how much knowledge our hosts had about so many of the things we are interested in. They had a very full library full of books on farming, smallholding, dairy sheep, beekeeping and so on and lots of experience of animal rearing and crop growing. I felt it was a missed opportunity not learning more from them or spending more time with them. On a more flippant note I also ate way too many lentils - I bloody hate lentils!
Good: It was a restorative place to spend time and gave us back some faith in smallholding and animal keeping after the rather frantic and haphazard environment of previous animal keeping hosts. The animals were all cared for with compassion and respect, they deliberately kept their flock of sheep small so they were able to give individual attention, shear by hand, lamb with involvement where required and so on. There was also a relaxed, slow pace to life with both hosts, a real feeling that everything would happen in it's own time, working alongside the seasons and with nature - permaculture in action I guess, without the fancy label or need to reinvent the wheel. There was recycling, reusing of resources and plenty of 'green' living at both hosts.
Learnt:Sadly very little in entirety but plenty of sparks of knowledge and food for thought - Jane talked to me about milking sheep which was something I had not thought about and will learn about more, we got to have a go at sheep shearing which was far trickier than it looked and I'd like to do more of. I learnt a little about woodland, trees and tree planting from Peter which I'd also like to take further. We got involved in a bit of clearing where some hedgelaying had been done - hedgelaying is another skill I'd like to learn more about. Like Star I also felt there were some areas we were more knowledgable about than our hosts (chicken keeping particularly) which was heartening that we do have some knowledge already.

Dragon:
Bad: I didn't feel like I helped Mummy and Daddy much.
Good: I found that it's getting easier to eat different foods.
Learnt:: I learnt most on the days with Peter, including that every bit of land has some use, whether it is bumpy, hilly, bad soil, water available or not. I leant bow line, granny and reef knots from Peter too.

Star:
Bad: I enjoy being at places with more animals.
Good: They looked after their animals really well, the best of anywhere we have been so far.
Learnt: about the dogwood tree, how to identify it and that you can use it for arrow making. I also learnt there are different types including yellow dogwood. That I know loads already about chickens, it was nice to feel like a bit of an expert and realise I already knew more than our hosts did about hatching and breeding because I have done lots of it already.

Ady:
Bad: We didn't have much time spent working alongside the hosts while we were at Little Coombe, which for me is usually one of the best bits of WWOOFing.
Good: The animal welfare was exceptional at Little Coombe. The chickens and sheep were treated so well and it was so lovely to witness, exactly how I would like to run a smallholding.
Learnt: About hand shearing sheep, only a little which has whetted my appetite to learn more about that. I also learnt lots with Peter about comfrey which I am really interested in and tree planting.

An Atypical Day

2011-05-17T22:51:00.000+01:00

A two worlds collide type blogpost :)

Dragon and Star are Home Educated, or I guess for this year Van Educated, or Farm Educated or Field Educated, or simply Left To Their Own Devices, whatever you'd rather call it. I usually don't try to categorise anything we do as it rarely fits neatly into any one box and I don't like labels much anyway.

We have always Home Educated and with children aged 10 and 8 it is now simply something we do rather than anything we think much about, but it is obviously something we are spending time talking about a lot at the moment as we meet so many new people. We are also finding that as life has changed for us this year so has the way we all learn, not just Dragon and Star. We have always followed a child-led or autonomous approach to education, believing that being given the freedom to decide what to learn for themselves with us playing a role as facilitator is the best way. This year though life has obviously changed and the opportunities for learning are different, sometimes more thrust upon us and sometimes trickier to find.

I think a school-at-home or rather more structured approach to education can be far easier to quantify as it works nice and logically through a curriculum and progress is easier to chart. Our approach can be rather more haphazzard with days, weeks or even months going by with nothing easily identifiable as 'Educational' being covered (although if like me you subscribe to the philosophy that we are all constantly learning all the time that is less of a worry) and then a run of stuff all learnt at once in a rush. This year is likely to prove a similar experience I think with a trickle of education all day every day and the odd burst here and there of epiphany, thunderbolt or educationally very rich moments. I suspect that in a roundup of the year it will be incredibly easy to show what a rich learning experience it has been but that odd days or weeks will look in isolation as though very little happened.

But I like a challenge! So when May rolled round which is traditionally the month when for the last 6 years we have captured a photoblog of our day to give a snapshot of our Home Ed life I didn't want to miss a year. If you are interested in reading a bit more about our Home Ed journey before now, or looking at previous photoblog days for contrast a very sporadic blog can be found at Monster & Teeny with photoblog posts for 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006 and 2005 . You can see why I didn't want to miss a year!

This May we have already stayed in 3 different places with another one due before the month is out, spread across five different WWOOF hosts in three different counties. No two days are the same so I simply chose today because I happened to start taking photos fairly on in the day. This week we are sleeping and breakfasting in Willow, then working with one of two different hosts (we are being shared between neighbouring farms) who feed us lunch and dinner.

So we woke, turned the van from a bedroom into a sitting room, had breakfast, got dressed and spent some time chatting to the host who's land we are parked on as he was moving his small flock of sheep around into the field next to us. Our host for today, Peter, arrived to pick us up and we jumped into his car and headed for one of his fields about a mile down the road. Tasks for the day once we'd introduced ourselves to each other were to have a guided tour of said field which is part woodland, part allotment. The woodland is a mix of mostly native trees planted by Peter over the last 5 or 6 years. Various orchard fruit and nut trees, several wild varieties, some evergreen, some deciduous with the long term intention of creating a woodland for years to come. Multi purpose as it creates shelter for the allotment part of the field, it creates a woodland useful for wood in years to come, it warms the area up by a few degrees and is simply good for biodiversity, wildlife, privacy and screening of the field and so on. It was fascinating to see which trees were doing better than others planted at the same time and try to work out why - shelter, proximity to other plants, disease, weather damage, water level in soil and so on.

We planted one of several trees Peter had brought along with us, telling us that you should not be planting trees at this time of year and all the reasons why not but explaining that sometimes you just end up with a tree that needs planting and so have to do so and what 'special measures' can be taken to give it the best possible chance and negate some of the factors for iit being the wrong time of year. Dragon and Star got a great lesson in tree identification, planting techniques, working out the weight of water by the volume, seasonal gardening and climate and some practical skill learning in digging, breaking up soil, watering, putting on cardboard and grass mulch and got to use tools such as wheelbarrows, fork, spade, watering can, knife etc.

Then it was tea / lunch time so we retired to some chairs near the shed, a kettle was boiled, tea was drunk, food was eaten and further conversations held. So much of our Home Ed day revolves around conversation, so much of our WWOOFing experience and learning revolves around conversation and today was no exception. I have already forgotten large amounts of what we talked about today and indeed to record it all here would be far too many thousands of words anyway but I do recall that when this photo was taken we were talking about languages. We were discussing Welsh, which my Dad speaks and any Welsh words I knew, how people learn language and whether French people learn to speak French from birth like we learn to speak English (or other mother tongue) or whether they learn it how we would learn a second language. I was explaining about Mother Tongue, Bilingual, citing some real life examples of people we know who learnt to talk using two different languages from babyhood, another friend who lives in the UK and says she now thinks and dreams in English despite being German and having that as her original first language because she has been here so long and talking about how written language is different again and that for example the word we or wee in English is not actually the same as the word Oui in French despite sounding the same, how the word for both white and grandfather in Welsh is the same but by knowing what context it is being used in you would be able to know which meaning it had each time.

Then we planted another tree so a repeat of the above, before heading back to the allotment area to water the raspberry canes, get a lesson in weeding and talk a bit about crop rotation, green manure and comfrey

Another cup of tea, more conversation and then a brief car ride to the woodland Peter has where they do various community projects including Forest School, green woodworking, bushcraft and survival, chainsaw and tree felling lessons and more. We had a tour of the area including a go on the very cool swing, a sit in the very cool chair at one of the fire circles, a use of the compost loo and a quick lesson in how it worked and a look round the kitchen with rocket stove, earth oven and other such cool kit.

some wildlife stuff such as looking at the tadpoles in the pond and discussing life cycles of frogs - frogspawn, tadpoles, froglets and so on, some more tree identification including looking at damage to trees from deer, rabbits, woodpeckers, some spotting of bugs and beetles and listening to bird calls and a tour of the woodland including looking at which trees had been felled and what impact that had had on the surrounding area, which trees would be selected next for felling and why and discussion on forestry, woodland management, what is coppicing and pollarding and tree diseases. We talked about which trees are good for what including their wood as timber, for burning and so on.

Then it was back to Peter's for dinner where we met his wife and son and had a nice meal and further chats and life information exchanging - always interesting :)

Then back to the van :) We sat and chatted for a while, talking about our day, what plans we have for the rest of the week and for the week after that. Dragon and Star made themselves some toast as a pre-bedtime snack:

Then teeth, pyjamas and 'up to bed' which these days all happens from one single standing point in the middle of the van :) with 'up to bed' meaning a clamber up to their bunk. Tonight we were reading Esio Trott (we're on a Roald Dahl kick at the moment, I think we've read most of them before but we re-read The Twits a couple of weeks ago and have been enjoying going back to a couple of other old favourites).

Ady and I carried on chatting so Dragon and Star ended up contributing to the conversation for a bit longer before they fell asleep.

The Wonderers Return

2011-05-15T19:32:00.000+01:00

We were due to be at an intentional community In Devon this week and next week but when I emailed them to confirm the details they said they had re-read our initial email and were worried we would not learn enough from them. They were concerned that we were looking to find hosts who could show us about self-sufficiency, green technology and rearing livestock and they are none of those things. They said they would love to meet us and we would be very welcome to come as there was always something to do in their communal gardens but we felt two weeks would be too long to spend somewhere that didn't cover enough of the things we want to learn about. So we made contact with another couple of hosts on our reserve list. One was not able to accomodate us but the other, back in Glastonbury again could take us for the second week. That was enough to persuade us to take Jill at Middlewick Holiday Cottages up on her offer to 'come back any time'. We had stayed in touch with a couple of phonecalls anyway, so it was simply a matter of seeing which cottages she had room in and what time we could arrive.

We've had another lovely week here, helping with various tasks as diverse as trimming hedges, mowing lawns, manning the office, tidying the library, converting an old red telephone box into a very small tourist information centre, filling up salt and pepper pots, serving breakfast to a group of Italians, cleaning windows, scrubbing the swimming pool steps, lighting the fire in the pizza oven, feeding the chickens and tending the vegetables. Enough glimmers of growing and animals to keep our hand in WWOOFing-wise and sufficient touches of luxury in the shape of proper beds, baths, large kitchens and of course the swimming pool and steam room to make it feel like a mini break!

Star has been happy to be back with Maggie the dog with the added attraction of chickens and horses:

Dragon has very much enjoyed learning how to drive the quad bike, practising his Harry Potter / Jedi / Pirate moves with sticks /swords / wands / light sabres and some space to spread out all his drawing materials and get creative:

Ady celebrated his birthday too this week, the first of the birthdays we'll spend away from home. We managed to get cards from friends and family send here, presents delivered bought online and had the day off 'work'. We spent it doing the couple of things we'd not managed to get round to last time we were in Glastonbury and had wished we'd done; visiting the Chalice Well & Gardens where we drank some of the water and had a quick bathe in the water too, reputed to have healing properties. I'm not sure if I believe in such things but it certainly felt lovely to put my shoes back on again after such shockingly cold water!

The other Glastonbury experience we had missed time we were here was fish & chips at Knights, an award winning F&C shop. We'd meant to get there but the only time we were organised to be there when we were hungry it was closed last time we were here. This time we managed to get there at lunchtime :)

It's been nice to be somewhere where people already know our story, we have met new more people as well as strengthening links with people in this area. We're looking forward to our next host; a week shared between two neighbouring farms.

Star:
Bad: missed farm-like jobs, I find gardening a bit boring (qualified that it is no one's fault as she knows this is not a farm, just that she loves being on a farm!)
Good: Got to spend time with Maggie (the dog) and Jill again.
Learnt: How you can furnish a house for free - not technically learnt from Middlewick, we visited a neighbour who have furnished their entire shell of a house using free stuff from freecycle / friends / rubbish and it is fabulous, Star was very impressed :)

Dragon:
Bad: The cottages have been very busy, fully booked most of the time which has meant we have not had the run of the place as much as we did last time.
Good: Spent lots of time pretend sword fighting with Daddy
Learnt: How to drive the quad bike.

Ady:
Bad: Missed Johnnie, Jill's husband who was here more last time and we only saw briefly last weekend.
Good: The hospitality and generosity of Jill has been amazing once again, it's a fab place to be with stunning scenery and a great place to spend time. Also it was nice to be somewhere that feels like a home away from home for my birthday.
Learnt: About repairing a rotten wooden window frame from spending some time with the carpenter working here.

Nic:
Bad: It's been a more sedentry week for me, less time spent outdoors and rather more sitting down. Nice, certainly but not good for me, particularly when coupled with our own kitchen to cook bigger dinners in!
Good: Lovely to see everyone here again, have a rest from Willow in a real bed, with access to bath, swimming pool etc. A busman's holiday certainly as we've carried on working but a slight rest nonetheless.
Learnt: more about the hospitality business; we got involved in catering for breakfast, more housekeeping and I spent several 'shifts' covering the office answering the phone and checking emails.